>>seem exactly like the job of a state AG, or other form of regulator, vs private lawyers. ...Political dysfunction aside, of course.
And there's the rub — most regulators and AGs will have some political leaning, and ALL of them have limited resources and will be unable to pursue every case, so many cases with great merit will go un-prosecuted.
For all of warts of class actions, that is an overwhelming benefit — a private class action, or latent threat thereof, can bring pressure where an AG or regulator will choose not to, or just lacks the budget and/or bandwidth to pursue.
And yes, making it easier to 'pierce the corporate veil' and create a stronger direct liability, including jail time, for officers, directors, and shareholders for intentional actions and omissions could do a lot to reduce harm of corporations.
"And there's the rub — most regulators and AGs will have some political leaning, and ALL of them have limited resources and will be unable to pursue every case, so many cases with great merit will go un-prosecuted"
Private litigators also have some political leaning, often as much or more as the AG, but ignoring that for a second, the limited resources part is very fixable.
Additionally, they are accountable to the people that vote for them (directly in some states, indirectly otherwise), ignorant or not, whereas private litigators are not. This is a feature and not a bug.
Instead we are optimizing or deoptimizing (depending on the state and viewpoint) for private litigation.
IE either they cap it or they uncap it, or ....
Also, as a general rule, if you have way too many cases with merit, the problem is probably not resources, but something else.
IE if you have tens of thousands of murders you can't prosecute due to lack of resources, you actually have a bigger, and different problem, than "we don't have the resources to prosecute all these murders". You won't actually get much of anywhere by having the resources to prosecute them all because you won't be solving the bigger, different problem causing you to have tens of thousands of prosecutable murders in the first place.
The same is true of most of these consumer class action cases.
Infinite lawsuits have not caused lots of behavior change, all told.
It is very hard for me to believe that 10x infinite lawsuits will somehow do it.
And there's the rub — most regulators and AGs will have some political leaning, and ALL of them have limited resources and will be unable to pursue every case, so many cases with great merit will go un-prosecuted.
For all of warts of class actions, that is an overwhelming benefit — a private class action, or latent threat thereof, can bring pressure where an AG or regulator will choose not to, or just lacks the budget and/or bandwidth to pursue.
And yes, making it easier to 'pierce the corporate veil' and create a stronger direct liability, including jail time, for officers, directors, and shareholders for intentional actions and omissions could do a lot to reduce harm of corporations.