One lawsuit brought by named plaintiffs on behalf of a larger group with the same injury.
A class action lets a small number of named plaintiffs sue on behalf of a much larger group who were harmed the same way. It exists for claims that are real but individually too small to litigate: if a charge of a few dollars was applied improperly to a million people, no one person can justify the cost of suing, and without the class device the conduct is effectively unreviewable.
A case is not a class action because it is filed as one. The court has to certify the class, and certification is contested and frequently refused. Once a class is certified, absent members are generally bound by the outcome unless they opt out, which is why class notices matter and why ignoring one has consequences.
The trade-off is scale against control. Individual recoveries in consumer class actions are often small, and a member who has suffered a substantial individual loss may do better opting out and bringing their own claim - a decision that is easier to make before the deadline in the notice passes.
The two moments worth advice are receiving a class notice - because opting out is a decision with a deadline - and believing a group has been harmed the same way, since whether a claim can be certified at all is the question that decides everything else.
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