What Does This Class Action Letter Mean?

You’re Already Members of the Class

“Once you get one of those postcards, you may already be in the class,” says Gretchen Garrison, an attorney at Gray, Ritter & Graham involved in multimillion-dollar class actions against Bayer, AT&T and other large corporations. “So there’s not a question of joining. It would only be a question of opting out or objecting.”

The class action suit actually began much earlier. Typically a handful of plaintiffs’ lawyers file suit against a company, usually because of injury or defective product, and then ask the court to include others claimants who may have been similarly affected. If the class is certified, it falls on the company to provide notice to potential class members. 

“The defendant is not always obliged to provide names, and there are a variety of ways to provide notice to potential class members,” Garrison says. “Due process requires the best practical notice, so it may be a publication, website or email; I’ve even seen them in magazines.” 

Keep the Class Action Notice

Garrison and other St. Louis class action lawyers urge consumers not to throw the notice away. “The only way you’re going to know what you’re entitled to, and whether you want it, is to read that notice,” says John E. Campbell of Campbell Law. “That notice is your gateway to understanding what’s happening.”

They recommend going to the listed website and reviewing the legal documents. Sometimes you need to fill out a form to be part of the class, or submit proof of membership in the class, but most often you don’t have to do anything at all.

Of course, you can opt out. Why would you? Say you own a car that could potentially accelerate without warning. “If you’re a consumer who actually had that problem, and you suffered some personal or physical injury, by all means you would not want to join that class action because you want to preserve all your rights for your own individual action,” says Elizabeth Carver, a partner at Bryan Cave.

Sometimes, when there are too many potential class members or they’re hard to identify, a notice is posted in a major magazine, such as Parade. And occasionally, like with the Apple settlement, a suit brought by a state’s attorney general (rather than individual lawyers) prompts an “instant” refund. 

Typical Class Action Settlement Funds

Generally, don’t expect to retire on any class action money. The rewards are usually small—a coupon or a product replacement—although sometimes they pay off in a big way. Campbell, for instance, once sued a company on behalf of roughly 100 retirees on the grounds of mismanaged pension funds. “We sent checks out for $70,000 and $80,000 to [each] person and they never went to court. They never paid a lawyer,” says Campbell, though he did recover fees. “That’s because we were able to resolve the legal issue one time instead of hundreds of times.” 

More important, class actions also help keep companies honest. “In the best case scenarios,” Campbell says, “class actions return money to people and stop bad behavior.”

For more information on this area of law, see our overview of class action and mass torts, or reach out to a law firm for legal advice.