Class Action News

President Signs Class Action Fairness Act of 2005

THE PRESIDENT: The first bill signing ceremony of 2005

The bill I'm about to sign is a model of effective, bipartisan legislation. By working together over several years, we have agreed on a practical way to begin restoring common sense and balance to America's legal system. The Class-Action Fairness Act of 2005 marks a critical step toward ending the lawsuit culture in our country. The bill will ease the needless burden of litigation on every American worker, business, and family. By beginning the important work of legal reform, we are meeting our duty to solve problems now, and not to pass them on to future generations.

Second, the bill provides new safeguards to ensure that plaintiffs and class-action lawsuits are treated fairly. The bill requires judges to consider the real monetary value of coupons and discounts, so that victims can count on true compensation for their injuries. It demands settlements and rulings to be explained in plain English, so that class members understand their full rights.

There's more to do. Small business owners across America fear that one junk lawsuit could force them to close their doors for good. Medical liability lawsuits are driving up the cost for doctors and patients and entrepreneurs around the country. Asbestos litigation alone has led to the bankruptcy of dozens of companies and cost tens of thousands of jobs, even though many asbestos claims are filed on behalf of people who aren't actually sick.

Class-action reform will help keep America the best place in the world to do business. It will help ensure justice for our citizens, and I'm confident that this bill will be the first of many bipartisan achievements in the year 2005.

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	Did You Know?
	Class action lawsuits has many advantages. Class action lawsuits may offer a number of advantages because they aggregate a large number of individualized claims into one representational lawsuit. First, aggregation may increase the efficiency of the legal process, and lower the costs of litigation. Second, a class action ensures that a defendant who engages in widespread harm -- but does so minimally against each individual plaintiff -- must compensate those individuals for their injuries. Third, in "limited fund" cases, a class action ensures that all plaintiffs receive relief and that early-filing plaintiffs do not raid the fund of all its assets before other plaintiffs may be compensated. Finally, a class action avoids the situation where different court rulings could create "incompatible standards" of conduct for the defendant to follow.