The Watkins Firm has proven strategies to defend a California class action lawsuit and protect the financial and business interests of our clients.  Our firm has defended employers, business owners and corporate interests for decades here in San Diego.  Our unique approach to litigation combined with our skill and expertise in taking apart class actions ensures your company the maximum opportunity to eliminate the risk of a class action lawsuit.

The first of many strategies to defend a California class action lawsuit is to prevent the certification of the class itself.  In order to certify a class and commence a class action, plaintiffs lawyers must attempt to find many examples of either a deficiency in your product or a claim related to its marketing.  The use a “representative case” to advertise and attract others, ultimately presenting the Court with a request to certify the class and assign their firm as lead counsel.  The claim of one plaintiff may be limited, from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars.  However, when the plaintiff’s firm pulls together a large group of cases the financial exposure to our clients can be staggering.

The Watkins Firm has more than four decades of proven experience in large business lawsuits and class actions. The legal steps required to certify a class provide many opportunities to raise legal challenges to successfully prevent the class action from certification.  Without the certification of the class itself, plaintiff’s lawyers usually do not have a financial interest in pursuing any of the legal claims associated with the proposed class individually.  In order to certify a class the plaintiff must prove the “class” itself is comprised of similar cases which, if tried separately, would clog the court system.  Therefore they request the certification of a “class” so the court may deal with a single court case to resolve hundreds or thousands of claims at once.

Pro-Tip: “The most important thing to know is there are many ways we can prevent a lawsuit or class action from ever happening in the first place.  There are often things our clients can do, immediately, to mitigate the damages or remediate the situation altogether. If you remove the potential for the recovery of attorneys fees then nobody wants to sue you anymore because they know they aren’t going to get paid in the end.

When you finally get sued, well, first things first. You’re going to find out about a lawsuit, either by being served or someone’s going to tell you. You’re going to find out in a multitude of ways, and that’s very important how you find out. Because when you find out there’s going to be a a time clock ticking away of action items you have to take in order to have that lawsuit go your way. The longer you wait, the worst it gets for you. So you’re going to want to find out, and I’m going to want to know as a lawyer, how did you find out? Did someone who’s suing you tell you? Did somebody who’s a potential witness tell you, did you get some kind of letter from a lawyer? Or did you get served with a process server? All those things have implications. So once you’ve gathered yourself, organized your thoughts and you know the facts and the dates, contact the Watkins Firm right away.

We have everything on computer. We find out if in fact you are being sued, by whom, for what, and even provide you with a copy the complaint. So with a copy of the complaint before they know you have it, you have a great advantage. So that’s the first thing we do. And we provide you with vital information right away before you even have to tell me the story. I’m going to give you information that you need, followed by advice about the actions you can take right away to reduce the consequences, or eliminate them altogether.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

The primary strategy is to establish the lack of connection or similarity between the representative cases proposed by the plaintiffs or broad groups of the class itself.  Did each representative case use the product in the exact same way?  Did they purchase it for the same purpose or proposed benefit?  Did they experience the same damages, failure or lack of benefit?  Exposing the different ways the individual plaintiffs used the product and the differing ways in which they suffered a “loss” exposes the class ultimately leading to its defeat.

There are several other effective strategies to defend a San Diego class action lawsuit available to the Watkins Firm.  Draw upon our more than four decades of experience and learn about our work defending “organic” or “Made in the USA” class actions, review our podcast Episode 31 – ABCs of What do Do If You are Sued as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today. Learn how the Watkins Firm can help to head off the exponential financial risk and reduce or eliminate all the potential exposures of a class action lawsuit.