A History of Class Actions: Modern Lessons from Deep Roots

The class action is linked so strongly with the unique characteristics of the modern era — mass consumption and mass production, large-scale disasters, corporate mismanagement — that it is easy to believe that it is a product of this era. Yet the roots of the modern class action stretch back nearly 1,000 years and its development has been ongoing for several centuries. Published in the Canadian Class Action Review, October 2011, Vol 7 No 1.