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“My firm doesn’t take coupon cases,” says Coleman. “Although they are a necessary consumer protection and there’s nothing wrong with them, I choose not to.”
Why coupon cases are necessary is as with all class actions they create a mechanism to punish businesses when those businesses harm a lot of people but only a little each. In 1966 the government amended Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures – more to protect shareholders than consumers, but also to simplify the process by which many litigants can, as a class, bring suit, rather than each injured party filing separately. Otherwise, businesses have a monetary incentive
to continue injurious practices that are profitable as long as the businesses “spread out” the harm so that no individual is injured enough to justify the trouble and expense of a lawsuit.
For example, when a bank, mortgage company, or other agent holds funds in an escrow account, the agent ought to pay any interest accrued to the person whose funds they are holding. Because the accumulated interest may not amount to much, you as an individual user of the firm’s services would have little recourse if, however, the firm simply pocketed the interest it owed you. The threat of a class action helps compel the organization’s fulfillment of its fiduciary duty.
In a broader sense, without the enforcement provided by class action lawsuits, low-cost consumer products need not function well or at all. More expensive products would be less likely to be recalled to fix minor defects.
Nevertheless, when Coleman switched from representing defendants in lawsuits to plaintiffs, his primary reason for doing so also caused him to have little interest in the coupon
cases. “For years I made a good living representing companies who were being sued,” recalls Coleman, “and it’s unusual having earned a reputation and developed those professional relationships to then ‘switch teams.’”
In class action cases, “these big companies have substantial resources and teams of attorneys who have graduated from places like Harvard, Yale, and Oxford,” says Coleman, a University of Tennessee Law School graduate. “I have found many lawyers throughout
my career who were smarter than me. But no one will outwork me.”
Having worked the other side, Coleman says that he does not believe in bashing business: “Of course corporations and other businesses are necessary. We need the products they make and the jobs they provide. They have to be able to turn a profit, but they also have to be accountable for those products and for the practices they engage in while making those products.”
Coleman is currently involved as co-lead or plaintiff counsel in more than 25 class actions across the country in courts in California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Nebraska and Massachusetts among other states.
In that vein, Coleman undertook a sea change in his practice and life, coming to the conclusion he should be representing plaintiffs instead. “Even though I have cases
in which I will represent as many as half a million clients,” says Coleman, “I receive thank you notes from individual class members and others about how a successful case has helped them and made a difference in their day-to- day lives. That makes you feel like what you’re doing is worth doing.”