That's one of the main use-cases, yes. The worry is that, due to the overhead of filing a suit and little that would be gained from a 1-person suit even in the event of success, a company could deliberately cause many people modest damages, if there were no class-action mechanism. The class-action mechanism is what makes it risky for a company to cause 1m people $10 in damage each, because they could face a $10m-damages lawsuit, plus punitive damages if it was reckless/deliberate activity. Otherwise it would be relatively safe to cause modest damages here and there, because even if you lose a $10 lawsuit with tripled damages, that's still only... $30. So companies could routinely deliberately harm people (if they kept the harms relatively modest) as a business strategy.
There are alternatives; in some countries, the public prosecutors take a bigger role and will prosecute those kinds of things on behalf of the public, instead of providing a mechanism for the public to band together into classes.
Wouldn't the company spend far more that $10m trying to address a million lawsuits (in small-claims court) for <$10 each though. I imagine any one small-claims proceeding would cost them several hundred dollars at least.
So are they banking on just defaulting to the judges decision and paying the money for such cases and then hoping that not many people will bother to pursue?
Personally I'd love to be in Redmond when, on the back of this decision, they get half-a-million or more court summons in the post one day.
> I imagine any one small-claims proceeding would cost them several hundred dollars at least.
Yes, but it would also cost that much to everyone suing. Would you lose a day of work (Say, $20/transport + ~$150 if you're make $40K a year, ~$400 if you're around $100K) to recover $10, even if you knew you had 100% chance of winning?
There aren't going to be a million lawsuits. I'm probably part of a half dozen class action suits per year. I never would have considered suing in any of them. In fact, I would generally prefer if there were some way for me to opt out and let the company keep my 0.0001% of the settlement. As far as I know, I can opt out (even if it's more trouble than it's worth), but that doesn't reduce the settlement amount.
My iPod nano worked just fine, my Netflix DVDs showed up in a reasonable time frame, I don't have receipts for the RAM I bought back in 1998, the list goes on and on. Consumers did not come out ahead as a result of those class actions.
Heather Peters is trying to get people to opt out of a class action settlement by Honda and instead sue Honda in small claims court (where the individual would have a better chance at wining their case against the Honda rep.
Maybe a million is unachievable, but the idea is there.
