Comparative Study of Class Action's Requirements in American and Canadian Law: Teachings for Iran′s Law

Individual litigation is common device for prosecution violating rights in legal regimes. The procedure is usually efficient، and is an effective device to protect individual’s rights. Nonetheless، in the cases where the value of cases is low، persons usually refuse to bring an action because its costs are more than its benefits. Conversely، the defendant unlawfully gets a windfall. This situation becomes acute whenever the plaintiffs are numerous، and most of them for low value of the relief do not file a lawsuit. In American and Canadian law، class action has been devised to deal with these situations. In America، some classes have been predicted that the persons belonging to each of them، in the case of being present legal requirements، can initiate an action. The requirements of numerosity، commonality، typicality، and adequacy of representation have to be present in all classes (general requirements) for the court to certify the class; however، they are required in a damage class action that the device would be superior to other procedure for aggregating of numerous claims، and the common legal issues of trial would predominate over the individual issues (specific requirements). This separation does not exist in Canadian law; moreover، in some aspects including the number of plaintiffs and no need to predominance of common issues over individual issues، differs from American law. There does not exist the same device in Iran’s law، and the sole method for individual’s litigation is to bring individual action that sometimes equals to non-litigation due to various obstacles. This paper analyzes its requirements in American and Canadian law to provide a context for examining and adopting it in Iran’s law.