The highest Court in the land issued a 5-4 decision yesterday dismissing the largest class action in history against Wal-Mart affecting 1.5 million class members and probably curtailing the "class action vehicle " for plaintiffs for generations to come. After this decision I feel like I'm stuck in a time warp in the 1880's in the era of the "robber barons", pre-antitrust, before the "Securities Acts", when big corporations could and would do anything they wanted. It is a scary feeling! The corporate world must be giddy.
The class action has always been "the great equalizer", allowing individuals, who are similarly situated, but whose numbers were too great and individual claims too expensive to file, to band together against the "big, bad, greedy, rich " companies! Plaintiff's lawyers would take them on a contingency and front millions of dollars of costs. Not an easy undertaking.
So what has this decision done ? Given some comfort and breathing room to Wal-Mart. Hurt the morale of the plaintiffs. Caused plaintiffs to start over...10 years of litigation down the tubes!
Made it more difficult to maintain a "class action discrimination case" on a national basis.
But at the end of the day, the plaintiffs will regroup, gather themselves and refile 100's ,if not thousands of more "finely tailored " class actions with smaller subsets. This thing is far from over, but the rules have changed now. The US Supreme Court has spoken(like Oz).
Round 2 coming up..."Let's get ready to rumbleeeeeeee!
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