When people are injured by the same company, product, or facility, they often ask the same question: “Is this a class action?” The truth is that there are several different ways a group of injured people can pursue justice, and the right approach depends heavily on the facts of each case. Understanding the differences between a class action, an MDL (Multidistrict Litigation), and an individual lawsuit can help you make sense of the options and to understand how your case might proceed.
Individual Claims: The Default Starting Point
Most personal injury and negligence cases, including car accidents, medical malpractice, and nursing home neglect, are filed as individual lawsuits. One person sues the party responsible for their harm, and the case proceeds entirely on that person’s own facts, medical records, and damages.
This is often the best approach when an injury plays out differently for each person affected, even if caused by a widespread problem like understaffing at a facility. A judge or jury needs to look closely at what happened to that specific person to determine fault and calculate a fair award of damages.
For example: A resident at a nursing home develops a severe pressure injury after being left without repositioning for extended periods. Even if other residents at the same facility experienced neglect, this resident’s case depends on their own medical history, the specific care they received, and the injuries they suffered — facts that are unique to them.
Class Actions: One Case, One Outcome, For Everyone
A class action allows one or a few people (“class representatives”) to sue on behalf of a much larger group who were all harmed in essentially the same way by the same company. Rather than each person filing their own suit, the case proceeds as a single lawsuit, and the court’s ruling or settlement typically applies to the entire class.
Courts will only allow a case to proceed as a class action if the claims share common facts and legal issues that can be resolved with the same evidence for everyone, and if a class action is genuinely the most efficient way to handle the dispute. This works well when the harm is uniform: the same defect, the same overcharge, the same policy applied to everyone the same way.
For example: A bank charges every customer with a checking account an undisclosed $35 monthly fee in violation of its account agreement. Because every customer’s harm is essentially identical ( the same fee, the same conduct, the same calculation) the claims can be resolved together as a class.
MDL: Coordinated, But Still Individual
Multidistrict Litigation, or MDL, is often confused with a class action, but it works quite differently. When many similar lawsuits are filed in federal courts around the country against the same defendant, a judicial panel can transfer them all to a single judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings, including shared discovery, common expert testimony, and resolution of legal disputes that apply across the cases.
Unlike a class action, however, each case in an MDL remains its own individual lawsuit. Plaintiffs are not merged into a single class, and each person’s damages are ultimately assessed on their own facts, whether through a bellwether trial, an individualized settlement program, or a trial after the case is sent back to its original court.
For example: Hundreds of patients nationwide are injured after using the same defective hip implant. Because the injuries share a common cause (the device defect) but vary widely in severity, from mild pain to major revision surgery, the cases are coordinated through an MDL for shared discovery about the device, while each patient’s individual damages are still evaluated separately.
Comparing the Three at a Glance
Why This Matters for Nursing Home, Medical Malpractice, and Injury Claims
Nursing home neglect, medical malpractice, and other personal injury cases are frequently poor candidates for class action treatment, precisely because the harm experienced by each resident or patient is rarely uniform. Care plans, medical histories, staffing on a given shift, and the severity of injury all vary from person to person. This is exactly the kind of individualized proof that makes class certification difficult.
That does not mean options are limited. If a facility’s neglect affected a number of residents, an MDL-style coordinated approach, or simply working with an attorney experienced in handling multiple related individual claims, can allow families to benefit from shared evidence about the facility’s practices while still pursuing the full value of each person’s own case.
Contact Us
The attorneys at Lacy Katzen LLP have been helping the seriously injured for more than 75 years. If you or a loved one has been harmed and you’re not sure which path is right for your situation, we’re here to help you sort through the options. Contact Lacy Katzen LLP today for a free consultation.
