Been wronged somehow but feel you can't redress it due to a lack of funds?
Legal action is very expensive, often enough so to prohibit most citizens from
taking action even when grossly wronged. Your house may have been flooded due
to improper engineering of a city sewer system. Not much you can do. But, if
that happened to several Pleasant Valley NY Homes, you may have a chance at redress.
In this article, we are going to take a look at some pros and cons when joining
a class action lawsuit.
We will start with the pros, because everyone needs to begin on a positive
setting. The most obvious benefit of joining a class action lawsuit, of course,
is that you incur little or no cost. Just as a company will seek to reduce its
own expenses in a joint project by using a collaboration solution,
individuals defray their expenses when they act together.
Another pro of joining a class action suit is that you may not have to incur
any expenses at all. Often, lawyers who take on suits involving a lot of people
suing a company over something like food products or industrial valves will
work on a percentage basis. That means they get paid out of the settlement,
which means you have to win the case.
Some people might see that as a con. After all, class suits usually have big
settlements, and a lawyer's cut can be up to 50%. It is hard to see that
money go to someone else, but you have to remember that without them, you would
have received nothing.
Another con when it comes to joining a class action lawsuit is that you have
to find the suit that directly involves you. This can take some time and will
probably involve a fair amount of research on your part. It's like trying
to find the public library when you don't know the town of Clarkson. Real estate is all around, and you know the building must be somewhere; you just
have to find it. Relentless searching is the key in both cases.
Of course, with the Internet around, your chances of finding the class action
suit to be included in are much improved. Until the information age hit its
stride, people who wanted to sue a company would have had to
look through the papers and other local sources for ages to find a suit. Today,
though, typing the basic keywords of the case should render results quickly
enough.
Finally, joining a class action will mean surrendering some of your privacy.
This is of particular concern to those who have medical conditions resulting
from the reason for the action. Everything from identification means to exact
symptoms and past health will probably be asked for, and for many the process
can be quite excruciating.
On the whole, however, it is better to join a class action lawsuit than to
let the opportunity slide by. If a lawyer is working on a contingency basis,
it's a good bet that the case is winnable and you have nothing to lose.
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