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State and Local Government Law
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; small-sum claims; consumer; consumer protection; tort; class action; Rule 23; consumer law; modern class action; Federal Arbitration Act; Federal Class Action Fairness Act; Field Code of Civil Procedure; Field Code; Federal Rules of Equity; hisorical; ambulance chaser; Israel Beckhardt; Marcel Kovarsky; Knorr v. Gen. Banking Co.; Kovarsky v. Brook. Union Gas Co.; finance; personal loan; Uniform Commerical Code; UCC; Daar v. Yellow Cab Co.; Hall v. Coburn Corp.; National Office for the Rights of the Indigent; NORI; NAACP; NAACP Legal Defense Fund; state class action; Snyder v. Harris; Truth in Lending Act; TILA; Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts; Class Action Fairness Act; CAFA; Chuck Grassley; Federal Arbitration Act; FAA; enforcement; litigation; aggregation; procedure; procedural rules; torts; legal aid;
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A History Of Consumer Class Actions In State Courts, Anne Fleming
A History Of Consumer Class Actions In State Courts, Anne Fleming
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
Most historians date the “modern” class action to the 1966 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Yet, the class action or “representative suit” has a longer, unexplored history in the state courts. In the late 1930s and 1940s, a group of scrappy, first-generation lawyers tried to build their businesses by aggregating the small-sum claims of many consumers. The defendants in these cases were, for example, lenders who failed to comply with the technicalities of state disclosure mandates, and utility companies that charged consumers extra fees. Each consumer’s claim was small, but, as a group, the claims could yield …