KINIGUIDE Salor assemblyperson Husam Musa and lawyer Matthias Chang have filed a class action suit against some of those implicated in the US Department of Justice’s court filing on 1MDB.

In the lawsuit, they claim to be Malaysian citizens acting on behalf of all Malaysians. All of them, except for a select few.

How can two people sue on behalf of almost an entire country, and what is the lawsuit all about?

In this edition of KiniGuide, we take a look at class action suits and how Husam and Chang’s suit fits into the picture.

What is a class action suit?

Class action suits are simply civil lawsuits with one key difference - the plaintiffs.

In the complaint of a class action suit, the plaintiffs would claim to represent a class of people who had been supposedly aggrieved by the defendants, thus seeking the court’s intervention to provide a suitable remedy.

Should the court decide in the plaintiff’s favour, then everyone in a similar predicament (that is, the same ‘class’) is entitled to a claim on the award.

However, if the plaintiffs lose the case, they alone would have to bear the costs awarded by the court.

Under Malaysian law, class action suits are known as ‘representative action’ suits, and are provided for under Order 15, Rule 12 of the Rules of Court 2012.

What constitutes a ‘class’ in a class action suit?

This varies greatly, depending on the case. It may be shareholders against their company’s directors, or prisoners against the conditions of their incarceration.

More commonly, class action suits are also invoked by consumers who are unhappy with their purchases, such as accusing a company of false advertising, or failing to meet safety standards and putting them in danger.

In Malaysia, representative action suits have been used by the indigenous peoples to protect their native customary land, but with limited success.

Residents of Kampung Broga had also used a representative suit to challenge a bid to build an incinerator in Semenyih, Selangor, before the government cancelled the project.

More recently, former minister Zaid Ibrahim, who was in charge of law, filed a representative suit against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, claiming to be acting on behalf of all Malaysians and taxpayers.

Who exactly are involved in Husam and Chang’s suit?

Husam and Chang (photo) are the only two plaintiffs in the suit. And as stated earlier, they are claiming to act for a class of people.

According to their court filing, the duo says they represent the intended beneficiaries of the state investment fund 1MDB, namely the citizenry of Malaysia.

“Plaintiffs’ claims are typical of class members’ claims, as all members of the class were similarly affected by defendants’ wrongful conduct in violation of law that is complained of herein,” the document reads.

Excluded from the class are the officers and directors of 1MDB and their associates, including family members, representatives, agents, and so on...