Importance of Class Actions

by David S. Casey, Jr. and Martin W. Edelman

Imagine that you visit your local hamburger joint (which is part of a national chain) to buy a quick dinner, but end up infected with e.coli poisoning instead. Then imagine that, after spending several days painfully ill, you read a newspaper article about your local hamburger joint.

The article reveals that many customers have gotten sick there over the past year, including two children who died of the same e.coli poisoning you had. As you read on, you learn that the restaurant knew its food-handling practices were making people sick, but failed to do anything about it.

What would your reaction be? You might be angry that someone would choose to risk your life. You'd probably want to make sure this didn't happen to anyone else. You might join with other people who got sick to take the owners of the hamburger joint to court in a class action.

This way, you would have strength in numbers � it's more economically feasible to go to court as a class. Your claims could be argued together, instead of clogging the court's docket one by one. Your lawyers could use the same evidence to argue the case, reducing litigation costs.

Now imagine that, after you and your fellow e.coli victims file the suit in your state court, you hear that the defendants in the case � the restaurant � have had your case "removed" to federal court. What does that mean?

It means that your class' case -- if federal law allows it to be tried at all -- will now be heard in a federal court, by judges appointed by the President. It means that your state judges, who may have been elected by the citizens of your state, won't hear the case as they ordinarily would.

Worst of all, it may mean that your case will take much longer to be heard. Because the federal government has a shortage of judges, and because the number of federal criminal cases (which take precedence) has risen, federal courts are now dealing with a backlog.

Even worse than that, according to a recent article in the National Law Journal, federal courts may need to suspend hearing civil cases altogether because of an impending budget crisis.

So why would removing cases to federal court be a good idea? In light of legislation under consideration in Congress, that's a question we should ask our elected representatives. There is legislation making its way through both the House and the Senate that would "federalize" almost all state class action suits.

State and federal judges oppose it.

The bill's proponents know that the federal civil dockets are severely backlogged due to the unprecedented number of judicial vacancies and the federalization of state and local criminal drug laws. Federalizing a majority of state class actions only ensures that such cases will go to the back of the line and be delayed for years.

Former Assistant Attorney General Eleanor D. Acheson of the U.S. Department of Justice, has said that "federalization of class actions would deny state residents a forum (and in many cases a meaningful ability to seek recovery for their injuries), replace the public policy of all 50 States about how to operate their courts . . . and overburden the federal judiciary with class actions dealing solely with issues of state law."

Taking away state judges' power to handle matters of state law is foolish. Federalizing class action suits would infringe upon the rights of states to manage their own judicial affairs. All states' citizens should take a good, long look at this proposed legislation. It is their rights that are in danger, because, after, all, justice delayed is justice denied.

No one should have to jump through extra hoops � just to keep a restaurant from making anyone else sick, a bank from ripping off its customers, or a tire company from selling dangerous tires.

David S. Casey, Jr., president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, is a partner in the San Diego, CA law firm of Casey, Gerry, Reed, and Schenk.

Martin W. Edelman, president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, is a partner in the New York law firm of Edelman & Edelman, P.C.