Class Action Madness...

About a month ago I vaguely recall reading an article about how Sony had hilariously made up a film critic. Somehow or other, two of their executives (now fired) thought it would be a good idea to quote this imaginary guy on their film posters. Funnily enough he was always extremely complimentary towards the films. Eventually Newsweek decided to track this critic down to find out if he ever said anything bad. The harder they looked the less they found. They realised he'd been made up. A great scoop for Newsweek.

But then...

Two Californian film goers decided to sue Sony as representatives of a class action... for the price of their film tickets! Quite incredibly they actually succeeded in their action and were awarded damages in the sum of the amount their tickets had cost. This result astounds me for three reasons:

1) Causality: To prove your case you must prove that the wrong doing 'caused' your loss. In this case I'm absolutely amazed that the judge was persuaded that 'they would not have gone to see the film they saw unless they had seen that film poster, read that comment by "the critic", and decided on the basis of his comment alone to go see the film.' Surely they could not prove this?

2) Damage: To win the case you must prove that the wrong doing caused loss. You must therefore prove that you did not get what you paid for. In other words the film must have actually been so bad that it does not justify your money having been spent. It's all very well saying 'I wouldn't have watched the film but for the critic', but you must also say '...and I didn't get one tiny bit of pleasure out of it at all.' Surely they could not prove this?

3) Policy: To enforce this class action would (and has) result(ed) in stupifying circumstances. Now, any film goer can hand in their tickets to the film (if they still have them!) and claim their money back.

This third point leads me to the heart of why I think class actions are absolutely absurd: all these film goers who can now reclaim the price of their ticket from Sony do not have to prove that they suffered damage or that the comment caused their paying to see the film. This makes a mockery of the whole justice system.

In England we have representative actions to establish points of law, but not to decide absolute liability for everyone in the class.

Perhaps I've got American law wrong slightly (feel free to correct), but these class actions appear madness.

For more entertaining commentry on the arguably aneutrally evil class actions see "King of Torts" by Grisham!