Last week I received a letter in the mail informing me that I was a member of a class action lawsuit against modern Apple iPods. Portable music devices had apparently experienced large-scale battery failures, the letter said, and it could do one of two things. I could accept the settlement offer and waive my right to sue Apple individually for the battery, or I could choose not to participate. If I signed, Apple offered to give me a $ 50 gift certificate to the Apple store. After speaking with my attorney, I signed the sheet.

Was that the right thing to do? I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all been, or all, will be holding a similar letter regarding another product at some point. If we don’t immediately rule out what appears to be spam, the class action notice can seem so complicated as to induce panic. In this panic, the second wave of valuable letters hit the trash cans. Of all our options, this is probably the least recommended. You will lose nothing by participating in a class action lawsuit and you could gain a lot, especially if you value fairness and corporate responsibility.

So what is a class action lawsuit and why are you contacting me? Class action lawsuits are supposed to give ordinary people the ability to take on large corporations with reasonable expectations of justice. After all, only one middle-class guy would be crushed by Apple’s best lawyers. You may not have lost much, you may have to recharge your iPod a few more times a day, but you can be sure that Apple saved millions of dollars between this battery and the next best option. They took a shortcut and the battery failed. The class action lawsuit allows Apple (and this is just one example) to pay a lot of people a little.

I was lucky, because Apple was already solving the case when I received the letter. There were no major legal battles, nothing prolonged. If the case goes to court, the class action members must sign in or out at the beginning. If you don’t sign, you are still in the lawsuit and subject to the terms of the judgment. Only by specifically opting out of the class action lawsuit can you disengage from it. If you choose not to participate, you will not receive any of the rewards at the end, but you reserve the right to make your own claim later. The time frame available to make this decision is small, leaving you with very little time to seek legal advice. If you can, do it! Attorneys can be expensive, but costs need to be covered if your part of the settlement and an initial consultation can be invaluable in making your decision. This should not be a gamble, but rather a carefully informed choice.

Getting a letter in the mail or reading a posted notice about a class action lawsuit is the easy part. What if you have a problem, you see that your neighbors have the same problem and the company in question is not responding? This is the time when you call an attorney and start your own class action lawsuit. Your attorney will call yours and I guarantee that a company that does not respond to your individual phone calls will listen to your attorney. Filing a class action lawsuit is not the easiest thing to do, but it is sometimes the only way to establish justice for consumers. When my iPod battery failed three years ago, I did not consider class action as an option, but I am very grateful that some brave individual took it upon himself to pursue the lawsuit. Now I have more confidence in Apple for offering an easy fix for its defective product and more confidence in the court system.