I had one pro bono client recently who stood up and challenged the system. It was him and I against the elite firms in town, but after serious thought - the law might just be on his side.
This man has had mental problems for many years, and it is quite possible that he was not mentally capable of understanding (at the time) the contracts that he entered into to be a part of a class action lawsuit. These suits vary significantly from most types of suits, most obviously in the limitations of the individual award given to each person, but have the benefit of providing access to justice for more people who would not otherwise hire a lawyer. The flip side is that you never meet the lawyers who represent you.
Class actions take years to resolve, and may be handled in a randomized location as a result of Multi-District Litigation. So your Tennessee-based lawsuit may end up being compiled with thousands of others in New York, and brought to conclusion in an area you would not be able to observe and attend. These compiling options are also highly likely to be overturned by a conservative appellate court, which might conclude that the idiosynchracies of your class structure - which are the building blocks of your suit - were such that you should never have brought the class action suit in the first place. So, after years of labor, an appellate court can rip the entire thing to shreds on the basis of your group structure not being "similar" enough to merit consolidation through the class action structure. Other problems feel like smoke screens to the plaintiff attorney who is told that their award and conclusion is no longer valid.
The individual plaintiff, on the other hand, does not have to worry about the classification challenges or the weaker reward structure. The plaintiff must chose a lawyer to represent their interests to have any chance of success, and that usually means paying a large fee. This plaintiff must stand alone against giant opponents, sometimes weaponless against delay tactics and blustering better absorbed by the capacities of a class action size plaintiff law firm.
These are the types of concerns that confront a plaintiff considering two different and mutually exclusive avenues of advancing a claim. For a person who is mentally challenged, such considerations are beyond their rational capacity. Someone must think through these things on their behalf. When there is no lawyer there to explain the downside, serious legal rights are being effected by the stroke of a pen.
That's why my client, having achieved mental stability, is now seeking redress from his previous decision to utililize the class action option. Who could blame him for wanting to reconsider a decision he could not have understood. Whether the law will agree with his perspective, of course, remains to be seen.
