The questions we tackle in this article are important ones. Can a good, responsible company act quickly in remediating customer problems that are also the subject of a putative class action without additionally being sucked into years-long, costly and draining class litigation? Can class actions be dismissed because they are not "superior" to voluntary refund and repair programs? Some courts say "yes," and a few say "no." A recent law review article by Professor Eric Voigt argues "yes." He declares the naysayer courts to be "wrong." More about that later.
The "class actionization of America," a term I used in prior articles to describe the proliferation of consumer class actions seeking mega-relief for all sorts of perceived shortcomings in products and services, continues unabated. A newer darling of the plaintiffs’ class action bar is pleading violations of a state’s consumer fraud act, a legal theory supplementing more traditional counts sounding in breach of warranty and products liability. The pleader can thereby turn the slightest perceived dereliction in product performance into a deep, dark, conspiratorial, anti-consumer fraud that allegedly shortchanged the class members and lined the corporate defendant’s pockets with ill-gotten gains.
