A law firm whose mission is to help protect consumers from illegal, unfair and deceptive practices by retailers and other merchants. The usual method is via class action litigation.

In California, consumer protection law includes traditional causes of action like breach of contract and fraud. But it also includes a wide range of specialized statutes that protect everything from appliance repair to wheelchair warranties.

When a group of consumers have a similar claim against a defendant, all their claims can be brought to court in a single class action lawsuit. Suppose a consumer bought a product that was falsely advertised. That consumer can file a class action lawsuit and act as a representative for everyone else (the class) who bought the product based on the same false advertising. All the claims are litigated as a group. The other consumers are notified about the litigation and have a chance to opt out if they don't want to participate.

The advantage for consumers is that companies are held accountable for claims that would be inefficient to bring individually. For instance, if a bank erroneously charges all ten million of its customers a $1 fee, no single consumer will sue to get the $1 back. But in a class action, the class can ask for the whole $10 million.

The advantage for defendants is that they can resolve all the claims at once. Once the class action is resolved, nobody who was in the class can ever bring a claim against the defendant for the same issue. It's like an insurance policy against future litigation.

In most cases, it doesn't matter — a business is equally liable for all consumer rights violations, intentional or not. (Though some laws allow for more severe penalties if a defendant violates that law intentionally.) The reason these laws exist is to create an incentive for businesses to adopt positive practices. In some ways, the guiding principle in California is less "caveat emptor" than "caveat venditor" ("let the seller beware").

None. If you were personally harmed by an illegal practice, you can find an attorney and bring the suit. And if your claim is similar to the other class members, you can act as the class representative. You don't need to gather a certain number of people. Nor do you need to get permission from the other class members to file the lawsuit.

MOCA is a great museum. But museums and other nonprofit organizations still have to obey the law. These organizations aren't allowed to save money by violating their customers' legal rights.

If you're a consumer getting a check in the mail for 89 cents as your share of a class action settlement, it does look a bit silly. But consider the bigger picture: your check is one of thousands or maybe millions of others that are being sent. The best measure of the worth of a class action is the total benefit to all the class members, not the benefit to one person.

Certainly, there are class action lawsuits out there that are pretty sketchy. But here's how I think about it —

Businesses exist to make a profit. And accommodating consumer rights costs money. Therefore, businesses have an incentive to violate consumer rights, because it's more profitable to do so.

Best case, they get away with it. Worst case, someone files a lawsuit and the business has to give some money back. But over time, businesses come out ahead, because many violations will never be detected, and many others will be too small or difficult to be worth prosecuting.

Economically speaking, consumer rights lawsuits are inefficient if you believe that they disrupt the free market — for instance, by taking back profits that businesses earned fair and square. (This is, in part, the narrative popularized by "tort reformers".)

But since businesses have no incentive to earn all their profits fair and square, it makes no sense to assume that they actually do. The more realistic view is that businesses are earning a certain percentage of their profits by violating consumer rights, and consumer class action lawsuits are a way of recovering some — but by no means all — of these ill-gotten gains for consumers.

A class action lawsuit also deters a defendant, and others in its industry, from repeating the error, which protects future consumers.