Tips for Finding Out if You're Eligible for a Class Action Lawsuit

• Author: Michael Bordonada
• Posted: 2024-06-17

A class action lawsuit is a simple enough thing to understand. It's when a group of people come together and sue for some type of wrongdoing. This could be workplace accident issues, mislabeled ingredients, people getting sick from a product, etc. In short, when some entity is responsible for harm or neglect among a group of people, the people can band together and file a class action suit. These lawsuits are taken a lot more seriously than your typical civil litigation. The phrase "power in numbers" definitely proves to be true here, and every year there are tens of billions of dollars awarded to people thanks to class action lawsuits.

Perhaps you were wronged in some way by a company, and you're considering filing this sort of lawsuit against them. What do you need to go forward? Here are some tips that you can use to help you in your pursuit of a class action lawsuit against an entity that may be responsible for wrongdoing.

Contact a Lawyer

Your first step here needs to be getting in touch with a reputable lawyer who knows how to attack in the class action realm. This isn't your typical lawsuit, nor is it a criminal lawsuit, and so you're going to need to speak with a lawyer before you do anything else. Your lawyer is going to tell you what your options are, the steps to take, etc. Your lawyer is also the person (or party) to initially file the letter of intent and the lawsuit. This isn't something that you can do yourself. You're going to need a lawyer to represent you going forward on this.

More than anything, a lawyer is going to let you know if you even have a case going forward. A lot of times, people think they have a class action suit but cannot go through with it for whatever reasons. A lawyer is going to help you here by letting you know if you have a viable lawsuit on your hands.

Build Your Class

If the lawyer says that you do have a case worth pursuing, he or she is going to require more people for the suit. In other words, you have to go and build your class. Because a lawyer is legally not allowed to solicit clients, as this would create a very broken system of money-chasing, the onus is on the claimants to come forward. You can actually help to find people to build your class here by taking your issue(s) to social media. You can check out different groups, forums and blogs. You can get your message out there that X company has done you wrong in some way, and see if other people are willing to step forward.

Nine times out of ten, when dealing with an entity that has wronged people in some way, those people are also out there looking for you. They're not typically hiding. It's easy to put a class action suit together, but it's something you'll have to assist with because your lawyer isn't legally allowed to solicit to build the class.

Buckle in and Prepare for a Long Ride

If you manage to secure a lawyer, build a class and file a suit, the next step is a very long one. You'll really have to get used to waiting. Even in cases where large corporations reach a settlement, this can still take years. What's worse: Sometimes a company will settle, sign the papers, and it will still be years before they end up paying out the money. This isn't like television shows or movies where everything is resolved by the end and the good guys always win. In real life, you could be waiting many years before you're finally able to settle and get any money out of this. Your lawyer will try to urge it along, as they're getting a cut and thus have a vested interest, but the wheels of justice move very slowly here.

Just keep this in mind before you end up going through with a class action suit. This could end up taking many years of your life to reach a conclusion.

If you want to file a class action lawsuit, just remember that most of this needs to be done through a reputable lawyer. This isn't something that you can just put together on your own from start to finish.