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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

Many places have a ‘small claims court’, which is very similar to arbitration. The issue is that class action lawsuits are very profitable for plaintiff lawyers working on contingency, so those are the cases that get brought.

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Small claims is great in that in most states lawyers generally aren't allowed so right out the gate you remove the wealth asymmetry issue. The downside is the dollar amount is very small. I'd like to see small claims limits expanded tbh.

Adjust them to the past X0 years of inflation from whenever the limits were last set, and peg them to inflation from then out.

They are very profitable when they win, what is the win rate of class action cases. Also what is the win rate of chosen class action cases versus all potential class action cases.

Measurement matters here.

The 'tipping point' for class actions is usually the class certification, not a final judgement by the court. Class actions are absurdly expensive for defendants, largely due to the scope of discovery, and they also cause problems for public companies (for reporting and other reasons), so public companies almost always settle them after the class is certified. On the other side, these settlements often don't offer much benefit to the class, because the plaintiff counsel take a massive fee off the top, pay off the lead plaintiff, and don't have much incentive to do anything for the remainder of the class.

Eh, class action lawsuits are more about altering the large companies behavior in bulk because the individual harm to any plaintiff is rather small and nearly impossible to justify the expense and complexity of the suit. The plaintiff themselves would not profit off of it.

You're describing the 'private attorney general' theory/idea, which I'd believe if class-action lawyers were taking less remunerative cases that offered more public benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_attorney_general

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