In law, an action in which a representative plaintiff sues or a representative defendant is sued on behalf of a class of plaintiffs or defendants who have the same interests in the litigation as their representative and whose rights or liabilities can be better determined as a group than in a series of individual suits.
Class-action suits that received national attention in the U.S. include a suit brought against manufacturers of Agent Orange by Vietnam veterans exposed to the herbicide (settled in 1984) and a suit concerning the effects of passive smoking brought against tobacco firms (settled in 1997).