A class action lawsuit can be defined as a lawsuit that involves a large group of people who were injured in the same accident or by the same device. This way, instead of each individual involved having to file a lawsuit, they can be grouped together into a class action suit. Other names for this kind of lawsuit are mass tort litigation and multidistrict litigation.
Although there are a vast number of reasons for class action lawsuits being filed, there are generally two similarities between them all. The first similarity is that every person who is involved has the same or similar issue because of the situation, and the second similarity is that there are so many people involved that it would be ludicrous to bring each individual into their own separate lawsuit.