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The Role Of Opt-Outs And Objectors In Class Action Litigation: Theoretical And Empirical Issues, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey Miller

Vanderbilt Law Review

We study 236 cases in which we could ascertain quantitative in- formation about the number of objectors, 159 cases with quantitative information about the number of opt-outs, 205 cases with both the size of the class and the number of objectors, and 143 cases with both the size of the class and the number of opt-outs. Opt-outs from class participation and objections to class action resolution are rare: on average, less than 1 percent of class members opt-out, and about 1 percent of class members object to class-wide settlements. Opt-out-rates and objectorrates can be partly explained by observable factors in …