ARE CLASS ACTIONS FOR CONSUMER FRAUD A FRAUD ON THE CONSUMER

Consumer protection has been the subject of much state and federal attention and legislation in recent years. It is certainly appropriate that this unorganized and long unrepresented group should now be gaining this attention. Recently, class actions have been suggested as a solution many of the consumer's ills. Such actions allow representative individuals to sue on behalf of all other similarly situated consumers to right wrongs wrought on all of them. Most states have some sort of class action provision as does, of course, the federal government in Rule 23. 1 In the federal realm, Congress is presently studying the federal law and considering the relaxation of the jurisdictional requirement that federal class actions must allege damages of $10,000 without aggregating the claims of the individual class members.2 The proposals have followed two lines : the first proposed by Senator Ty dings and Representative Eckhardt would eliminate the jurisdictional amount requirement and open federal courts to consumer class actions claiming violation of any state or federal statutory or decisional law for the benefit of consumers;3 the second, proposed by the administration, would sanction consumer class actions after the federal government has brought a successful enforcement action against the defendant violation of any one of eleven unfair or deceptive practices.4 The bill which has been reported out of the House subcommittee5 in effect combines both approaches. It eliminates the aggregation rule in federal courts. It includes provisions both preliminary actions by the federal government and direct consumer class actions. The bill in effect engrafts Federal Rule 23 to the civil procedure of the states and permits state courts to hear consumer class actions on a concurrent basis with the federal courts. The provision thus gives those states which have not heretofore permitted class actions or have permitted them only to a limited extent a ready-made class action statute (presumably consumer actions only), incorporating Federal Rule 23.