"Unfair-Competition Law Reform May Encourage Class Actions"
Today's Daily Journal has this extremely anti-plaintiff, pro-defendant article. The article essentially assumes that nearly all UCL cases and even most class actions are filed in bad faith. For example: "The lesson we learned in the last year is that plaintiffs will resort to class actions with increasing frequency if they have an incentive. The new law proposed in Proposition 64 may encourage more plaintiffs to bring class actions in the short term without regard to whether the class-action procedure is appropriate in those cases. This trend probably will persist until plaintiffs begin to understand the difficulties presented by the class-action device." As a plaintiffs' attorney, I find that statement, and its tone, very offensive. The author should have paused a moment to consider that the Daily Journal is not a defense-oriented newspaper, and should have published this article in a forum better suited to its intended audience.
- posted by Kim Kralowec @ 12:26 PM