What Are the Benefits of a Securities Class Action?

Video Summary: The investment fraud lawyer, Sam Edwards, discusses the pros and cons of joining a securities class action lawsuit.

Video Transcript:

The security's class action is a case where one person or a group of people file a claim on behalf of all other similarly situated investors so that those investors don't have to bring their own individual lawsuit. The advantages are is for those who are not named parties in the securities class action, you can participate in any settlement or any potential award in the class action without having to do any work and without having to take any risk and failing your own claim. The disadvantage is that on average securities, class actions settle for fairly insignificant amounts, usually in the range of five to 15 cents on the dollar of people's losses.

So for someone who has lost a small amount of money where it wouldn't be financially beneficial for them to bring their own individual action, the securities class action can be a very viable option for that person. And frankly probably leave the only viable option. Alternatively, investors who've lost a significant sum of money, ones you've lost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and certainly those who have lost in the millions of dollars, may want to opt out of a security's class action and instead of participating in that case, file their own case and be able to direct how much the case would settle for and whether or not the case would go to trial.