Standing to Sue and Multiple Defendant Class Actions in Australia, Canada, and the United States

Recent decisions by appellate courts in Australia, Canada, and the United States provide an ideal opportunity to explore an important issue concerning the class action procedure, which has been largely ignored by legal commentators in Australia and Canada and has received, in the author's opinion, inadequate attention in the United States. The issue in question concerns the availability of the class action device where the representative plaintiff is seeking to initiate a class proceeding against more than one defendant but does not have individual standing to sue all of the proposed defendants.