Goldberg & Trask on No-Injury and Piggyback Class Actions

Phil Goldberg & Andrew Trask have published No-Injury and Piggyback Class Actions:  When Product-Defect Class Actions Do Not Benefit Consumers.  The abstract provides:

Class counsel are more frequently filing product-based class actions that, whether
successful or not, offer few practical benefits to real consumers or class members.
These no-benefit class actions cause the unnecessary expense of the courts’ time and
resources, and they often fail to provide actual value to class members while still
producing substantial attorneys’ fees. This article explores why strategic vagueness in
plaintiffs’ filings and a lack of vigorous analysis by the courts have allowed no-benefit
class actions to unnecessarily consume court resources. The article concludes by
offering suggestions for how courts can alleviate some of this pressure, primarily by
requiring judges to follow and enforce Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23(b)(3)
as the rule was written and intended.