A Personal Injury Attorney Can Help Explain
There are a few ways a person who has experienced personal injury can proceed in attaining compensation. Two of the most well-known avenues include class action and mass tort lawsuits. What are the differences between these two, and what might make mass tort preferable? If you need help understanding these differences you can contact a personal injury attorney.
Class-Action Lawsuit
A class-action lawsuit is essentially a single case brought before the court on behalf of a group of people who have all suffered the same personal injury. An example of this is when the wrongdoing of a large company is proven, and they are forced to make a single monetary settlement to compensate all the people involved in the class action. Each person gets a share of that settlement.
Mass Tort Proceeding
A mass tort proceeding differs in that a personal injury attorney launches a separate lawsuit for each plaintiff. This means that dozens of cases are all brought against the same company for whatever negligence they have committed. Each person can be directly involved in their mass tort lawsuit.
Each settlement is considered separately, and the overall monetary compensation forced from the company stands to be a lot more. A mass tort lawsuit can also damage a company’s reputation far more since several cases contend with them, rather than just one.
Personal Injury attorneys such as Robert J. DeBry & Associates are currently seeing a massive surge in mass tort cases.
One of the main reasons for this is that many pharmaceutical and medical supply companies are rushing products to the marketplace because of the huge investment and profit involved.
Congress is also being lobbied repeatedly to streamline the FDA approval process to get drugs to the market faster. However, putting a product out before proper testing is undertaken can have disastrous results for everyone involved.
Be sure to consult with a personal injury attorney if you, or someone you know, has suffered a personal injury at the hands of big business.