Class-action lawsuits are tools of justice

Re “The case of the class-action con,” Opinion, May 27

Lawrence Schonbrun’s exclusive focus on the abuses of class-action litigation tells only one side of the story. The ability to file class-action lawsuits in American courts has often been the only route by which poor and helpless victims could obtain some measure of justice for significant wrongs committed against them by multinational corporations. The most dramatic recent example was the slew of class-action lawsuits filed by elderly Holocaust survivors in the 1990s against Swiss banks for failing to return money deposited with the banks before the war, European insurance companies for failing to honor prewar insurance policies and German industry for using Jews and non-Jews as slaves in such places as Auschwitz. Until the class-action lawsuits were filed, all of these corporate entities had ignored these claims for more than 50 years. The loud knock of class-action litigation resulted in settlements for Holocaust survivors and heirs of $8.5 billion.

In contrast, when such former slaves tried to file suits in German courts against German industry, each Holocaust former slave was forced to file an individual suit; a timely and unwieldy process that got nowhere.

MICHAEL J. BAZYER

Professor of Law

Whittier Law School, Costa Mesa

Bazyer is the author of “Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in American Courts.”