They are usually not targeted to benefit the individual victim. The idea is to make the responsible party pay an enormous amount of money so it will deter them from doing the same wrongful thing again. The class "members" don't have to participate (i.e. depositions, etc) -its the attorneys who have to do all the work-and believe me-unless you are with a large law firm with lots of assets-you won't be taking on any class action lawsuits-way too much time and money for the sole practitioner. Some of these take years and years to settle and cost millions of dollars for the class attorneys to get the case to a point where the defense wants to settle. So the individual member (you) normally ends up with a small amount of dough and the attorneys -should they prevail or settle favorably-get paid for their time and effort and hopefully the wrongful conduct of the defendant stops. (hopefully)
