Getting in on the action

It sure didn’t surprise me to see that a class action had been started as a result of the outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in Toronto.  What surprised me was how long it took.

Class actions are meant to be an effective tool to address wrongs that are committed against a large number of people.  In my opinion, they have become a tool for abuse, used instead as an opportunity for lawyers to create income for themselves out of small problems. 

For example:

There was a recent case where a phone company charged a lot of customers a couple bucks too much.  Class action!  Customers got a buck or two as a credit on their phone bill.  Lawyer gets a few hundred thousand.

Anytime there is a situation where a few or more individuals have suffered something, there is a lawyer jumping in trying to make a class action out of it. 

There are cases where more than one lawyer starts a class action for the same problem.  Then the lawyers start to fight over who gets to keep the action and who has to walk away.  One of the deciding factors is whose action was started first.

The result:  lawyers are jumping on possible class actions as soon as they can.  The “ambulance chaser” has been reborn.

Class actions are still the appropriate tool to deal with mass wrongs.  However, I think we need to change the way the tool is used.  I just don’t see the point of a lawsuit to deal with a case where a lot of people have been ripped off of two bucks.  No individual is going to be bothered to spend the time to recover it.  The only one who wants to spend the time is the lawyer who wants a few hundred thousand in fees.

To be fair, I have heard the opposite argument.  The argument goes that class actions are the way to prevent big companies from breaking the law by making it so costly for them when they do.  It’s a good argument, but you don’t have to agree with it.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction.  You may have seen the news of the water problems in Kaschechewan, the native reserve in Northern Ontario.  Now that some of the residents are in Sudbury (where there are lawyers), how long do you think it will take for a class action to be started? 

I’m guessing within 2 weeks.

I think that the situation is probably an appropriate one for a class action.  There are a lot of people who have become sick because of (arguable) negligence in the location of the water intake pipe and the manner in which the band was left to look after a water treatment plant that they were not equipped to operate.

It just bothers me that when I see this situation, the first thing that comes to mind is the possibility of a class action and the speculation as to how fast one will be started.