Community Of Interest

The evolution of the common law and, eventually, the written rule governing this procedural mechanism consistently recognized that the fundamental purpose and characteristic of the class action device is that those purporting to prosecute a claim possess a community of interest. All of the Rule 23 criteria as well as those superimposed by implication arise from that sense of community. The judicial economy so beneficial to the system of resolving cases can be accomplished only if those before the court and the absent group they represent enjoy interests that are aligned.

Definable Class

Capital Building Image Who are those absent persons possessed of the interest aligned with each other? That is not a rhetorical question. Unless that reality can be articulated a court cannot ascertain who is in the class and thus bound by the ultimate judgment or settlement in the case. As important, the class action criteria are not self-initiating. A person who seeks to represent others sharing an aligned interest, must also possess that interest himself. That implicit requirement is as elementary as it is fundamental because society reasonably may expect that as an incident of a person advancing his own interest shared with others he will also advance the interest of those others - even though unknown to him. Self-interest, the motivating force that drives our adversarial legal system, also sustains the class action. It is axiomatic that we trust man (the representative) to help his fellow man (the class) if, by doing so, he helps himself.

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