Elizabeth M. Tarasi Litigation Law Blog on Lawyers.com

What is a Class Action Suit?

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by Elizabeth M. Tarasi

When there is a large number of individuals that have been negatively effected by the same product or hurt in some way by the same event or set of circumstances, a class action law firm in Pittsburgh can file for the group as a whole. Typical examples include airplane crashes, tainted food products, and cases like 3 Mile Island or other widespread environmental contamination.

One of the more famous class action suits stands as a good example of how hundreds of victims can take on a giant company that acted with neglect and exposed thousands of innocent people to cancer causing agents... did you see the movie Erin Brockovich? Pacific Gas & Electric had knowingly dumped huge amounts of a known cancer causing agent called chromium 6 into ditches that would ultimately leach carcinogens into the drinking water of the local community for decades. In a case like this it would be difficult for individual families to fight a corporate giant because of the millions of dollars in legal fees needed to go to trial, but it was possible to with a class action suit. Not only because of the class action was it possible to fight a giant corporation, it was successful, and hundreds of victims and their families got compensated.

One more feature of a class action suit to note is that it can take anywhere from 3 to 10 years to settle a case like this. The long duration is another factor making these cases difficult because many of the victims can die during the proceedings. In the case against PG&E, it was the high incidence of cancer in the town that triggered the initial investigation. It was Erin Brockovich that noticed the high cancer rate when she was researching real estate. Many of the payouts went to the families of deceased victims who were deprived and suffered as a result of the actions of PG&E.
Posted at 15:25 PM
Topic: Litigation
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