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The Rise of No-Injury Class Actions

By Peter Masaitis
November 30, 2015

We all know that for a product liability plaintiff to have standing to sue, he must demonstrate both that he suffered some form of compensable harm and that the harm was caused by the defendant's product. But what if that plaintiff is an unnamed member of a class action? Though the answer ought to be the same for individual plaintiffs and members of class actions, recent case law questions that assumption. Hopefully, two cases pending before the Supreme Court may clarify, or potentially change, the landscape.

Why Have No-Injury Claims Become More Common?

A traditional product liability claim seeking damages for personal injury or property damage faces some common challenges. First, proving that there was a design or manufacturing defect in any given product can be very difficult, particularly when that product is a sophisticated, computer-controlled device, as more and more consumer products are these days. Second, the economics of smaller, one-off product liability claims are not always attractive to plaintiffs' lawyers. Courts rarely certify class actions that attempt to improve the economics of traditional product liability cases because individual questions of law and fact tend to predominate over common questions.

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