At present our legal system is getting a workout all over the country. Front and center are the various actions related to Donald Trump, be they related to the 2020 election (DC and GA), document possession (FL), business expenses (NY) and sex (NYC). In Washington, the federal government is taking a swing at Google, while in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is swiping at Disney. And challenges to laws on abortion rights, migration, climate change and a host of other hot button issues are making their way through the courts in Texas, California, Alaska and all points in between.
However, not withstanding Trump's line of "I'm being indicted for you," most people will never be involved individually in a lawsuit. While there are a reported 40 million civil actions filed every year, most involve businesses (Walmart alone gets sued 5000 times a year) and specific groups of professionals (doctors and landlords, for instance). As such, outside of estate issues, the majority of folks rarely have to consult the more than 1 million lawyers in this country with regards to settling a dispute.
The one exception involves a type of lawsuit that you likely have been involved in for a problem you never knew you had. Called a class action, it's been around a long time, first appearing as "group litigation" in medieval England around 1200. It went through various iterations, with the current form being codified in 1966 under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That laid out that numerous people wronged by the same entity could be bound together and sue for damages even if they didn't know each other. Unless they decided to opt out, they could be represented by a single individual, and partake of any settlement that was reached.
Those lawsuits are for a wide variety of transgressions, including securities violations, workplace issues, consumer complaints and increasingly, cyber breaches. You probably have gotten notice that you are a part of one or another in the form of a letter or email that states that unless you elect to go it on your own that you have been aggregated with other fellow sufferers, a group of people you might not even have known existed. In most cases you need to do nothing other than fill out a form that confirms that you did buy the electric toothbrush that was supposed to stop tooth decay, or bought the stock believing that that the company had a market for those rain proof boots. All it took was one dissatisfied consumer or investor to stand up to Big Footwear Inc. and call their bluff, and you each get a $20 gift certificate towards your next purchase of galoshes.
The latest for us was involved our electric kettle. We had bought it paying no real attention to the brand or design. It had good reviews, heated water as advertised, and that should have been it. But the brand was Muller Austria, and the company's logo stamped on the bottom included an Austrian flag. Well, it turns out that one consumer took that to mean that it was designed and/or manufactured in Vienna or its environs, and made her purchase based on that representation. (I guess she thought that those who make Linzer tortes have a better handle on how to boil water.) Nope. It was merely a name, in the same way that Haagen-Daz isn't from Holland, but Brooklyn. She sued, and as we had also been purchasers, we were smooshed together with her and others. Rather than get into a protracted battle, the parent company of (now just) Muller settled with all similarly and egregiously wronged, writing each a check for $7.50, and dropping the "Austria" and flag graphic from their name. And just like that, I am a successful litigant.
As the grandson of a lawyer and the father of one, I appreciate the complexities of the legal world. But as a civilian, I also find it a strange universe with its own language, customs and sense of time, much of which make questionable sense. It all adds up to make me want to avoid interacting with it if at all possible. Or as Mort Zuckerman put it, "I decided law was the exact opposite of sex; even when it was good, it was lousy."
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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to settle things in person. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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