Overview of Class Actions: Italian Consumer Law and Cross-Border Litigation

Consumers and users are daily involved in commercial practices and transactions that can end up not pacifically. We buy items and services, we travel, we use public services and vehicles and we enter into contracts with banks, insurance and financial services companies. The disputes arising from these everyday life events need collective remedies which may facilitates access to justice by those whose rights have been violated by one and the same professional. A class action allows a number of consumers to bring a case together before the Court to obtain compensation for a damage caused by the same professional. It is a lawsuit brought by a group of claimants, which allows them to enforce their rights collectively where they would not have done on an individual basis because of the cost, the risks and the time that legal proceedings entail. This paper analyses the peculiarities of this kind of litigation, in general and on a European perspective; then it tackles: the archetype of U.S., Italian class actions rules and cross-border litigations issues.