Can One Person Start a Class Action Lawsuit?

Can One Person Start a Class Action Lawsuit? Yes. It Only Takes One.

Here's something most people get wrong about class action lawsuits: they picture a stadium full of angry customers, all filing paperwork on the same day.

But that's not how it works. It literally only takes one person to start a class action lawsuit.

What Federal Rule 23 Says About Who Can Start a Class Action

Federal Rule 23, which governs class actions, doesn't open with a crowd. It opens with a single person. The text begins: "One or more members of a class may sue … as representative parties on behalf of all members."

Not a thousand. Not even a hundred. Just one.

So a class action doesn't require an army of plaintiffs lining up outside a law office before anything can happen. It can start with something much smaller and much more ordinary: a moment of noticing.

• One consumer who looks twice at a fee that doesn't quite add up.
• One customer who questions why the price at checkout isn't the price that was advertised.
• One homeowner who spots a charge on a statement that shouldn't be there.
• One employee who realizes a policy that affected them might be affecting everyone else with the same job title.
• One person who just has that nagging thought: "I wonder if they're doing this to everyone."

That's the spark of a class action lawsuit. If you think you may be that one person, our class action attorneys can review what you noticed.

What Is a Named Plaintiff or Class Representative?

That one person can become what's known as the named plaintiff, or the class representative. From there, the lawsuit isn't really about them anymore, not in the narrow sense.

It becomes a question: is there a larger group of people out there who went through the same thing, or something close enough to it, at the hands of the same company or organization?

The Four Requirements for Class Certification

Now, here's the qualification that matters. Rule 23 doesn't hand out class certification just because someone raised their hand first. Finding "the one" is only the opening move. To actually become a class action, the case has to clear several hurdles:

• Numerosity: The proposed class has to be big enough, usually at least 40 persons, that have been harmed or affected by a common course of conduct.
• Commonality: There have to be common questions of law or fact that the whole group shares.
• Typicality: The representative's claims have to look like everyone else's claims, not some outlier version of the story.
• Adequacy: The representative (and their attorneys) have to be capable of actually protecting the interests of people who aren't even in the room.

Why Class Actions Matter

Class actions are perfectly suited to help prevent a corporate defendant from profiting from many small frauds or wrongful conduct that typically on their own would not make sense to sue over. Yet such frauds can benefit a company millions and sometimes even billions of dollars.

So "it only takes one" is true: one person can open the door. But whether the case becomes a full class action depends on whether that one person's experience turns out to be everyone else's experience too.

The class action mechanism is one of the only processes that helps a single individual force a massive corporation to make change or stop its illegal actions.

Think a company may be doing this to more people than just you? Contact us to talk it through.