Initial ideas
Published on February 23, 2005 By wiessen In Welcome
Hello, I am new to the bloggosphere. I do feel a it is a priviledge to communicate my thoughts and I do hope to engage all on topics such as medicine, law, environmental issues, and yes, politics.

In a nutshell, I would like to express many concerns as to the recent passage and subsequent signing into law a law that will move class action lawsuit from the jurisdiction of state courts to that of federal courts.

My understanding on this is that the law does not cast a wide net covering all class action suits, but rather, suits where businesses are defendants.

What I would like to read from fellow bloggers is to what extent will plaintiffs will be limited that is filing of cases against businesses will the time to file be reduced? Will there be increased court costs? Will there be the possibility for pro se cases?

Thanks.


see ya.

Comments
on Feb 24, 2005
Howdy Wiessen, and an unofficial welcome to the JU to you!!!

My understanding on this is that the law does not cast a wide net covering all class action suits, but rather, suits where businesses are defendants.


I'm not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV), but I have caught sight of a few chasing my ambulance!!

A class action suit isn't a suit where businesses are defendants. A class action suit is one where "or a group of parties, may sue as representatives for a larger class of people." In other words, if you and I were to get together to sue a company, that wouldn't be a "class action" lawsuit. However, if we decided to sue a company on behalf of the bloggers at JoeUser.com, it would.

Requiring class action suits to be heard in federal courts makes a lot of sense (at least to me), because the decisions in class action cases almost always include people and businesses from more than one state. By definition, one state court decision shouldn't carry much weight in another state.

Class action suits rarely help anyone but lawyers, since they do all they increase the pool of "plaintiffs" (the ones supposedly hurt by the defendants to the point that most only see a few dollars, while the lawyers take their 30 or 40% of the "prize".

http://ww3.definitions-legal.com:8567/class-action-lawsuits/class-action-lawsuits-overview.htm