CLASS

class,n.1. A group of people, things, qualities, or activities that have common characteristics or attributes <a class of common-stock shares> <the upper-middle class>.protected class.A class of people who benefit from protection by statute, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, or religion. [Cases: Civil Rights  1007, 1107, 1152, 1165. C.J.S. Civil Rights §§ 2–5, 7–9, 11–13, 18,22, 26–27, 30–31, 33–37, 41–42, 44, 67, 88.]2. The order or rank that people or things are arranged in <she flew first class to Chicago>.3. A group of people, uncertain in number <a class of beneficiaries>.testamentary class (tes-t<<schwa>>-men-t<<schwa>>-ree or -tree). A group of beneficiaries who are uncertain in number but whose number will be ascertainable in the future, when each will take an equal or other proportionate share of the gift. [Cases: Wills  521. C.J.S. Wills § 967.]4.Civil procedure. A group of people who have a common legal position, so that all their claims can be efficiently adjudicated in a single proceeding <a class of asbestos plaintiffs>. [Cases:Federal Civil Procedure  161–189; Parties  35.1. C.J.S. Parties § 28.] opt-out class.A plaintiff class, certified under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3), from which class members may choose to exclude themselves if they do not want to be bound by the decisions or settlements reached in the case. • Rule 23(e) permits courts to dismiss class members who request exclusion. Class members may wait until the settlement’s terms are announced before choosing to opt out.settlement class.Numerous similarly situated people for whom a claimant’s representative and an adversary propose a contract specifying the payment terms for the class members’ claims in exchange for the release of all claims against the adversary. • During the 1980s and 1990s, mass-tort defendants began using settlement classes as a means of foreclosing claims by some unknown number of existing and future claimants. See, e.g., Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 117 S.Ct. 2231 (1997).CLASS ACTION class action.A lawsuit in which the court authorizes a single person or a small group of people to represent the interests of a larger group; specif., a lawsuit in which the convenience either of the public or of the interested parties requires that the case be settled through litigation by or against only a part of the group of similarly situated persons and in which a person whose interests are or may be affected does not have an opportunity to protect his or her interests by appearing personally or through a personally selected representative, or through a person specially appointed to act as a trustee or guardian. • Federal procedure has several prerequisites for maintaining a class action: (1) the class must be so large that individual suits would be impracticable, (2) there must be legal or factual questions common to the class, (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties must be typical of those of the class, and (4) the representative parties must adequately protect the interests of the class. Fed. R. Civ. P. 23. — Also termed class suit; representative action. [Cases: Federal Civil Procedure  161–189; Parties 35.1–35.89. C.J.S. Parties §§ 28–38, 40, 55.]“The class action was an invention of equity … mothered by the practical necessity of providing a procedural device so that mere numbers would not disable large groups of individuals, united in interest, from enforcing their equitable rights nor grant them immunity from their equitable wrongs…. By rule 23 the Supreme Court has ex-tended the use of the class action device to the entire field of federal civil litigation by making it applicable to all civil actions.” Montgomery Ward & Co. v. Langer, 168 F.2d 182, 187 (8th Cir. 1948).hybrid class action.Hist. A type of action in which the rights to be enforced were several and varied, but the object was to adjudicate claims that affected or might have affected the specific property in the action. [Cases: Federal Civil Procedure  166; Parties  35. C.J.S. Parties § 73.]spurious class action.Hist. A former category of class action in which the interests of class members are several, not interdependent, and joinder is allowed to avoid multiplicity of suits. [Cases: Federal Civil Procedure  166; Parties  35. C.J.S. Parties § 73.] [Blacks Law 8th]