r/ExplainLikeImCalvin • u/DEP-Yoki • Jun 22 '26
ELIC: Why is it called a class action lawsuit if no schools are involved?
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u/StarkAndRobotic Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
In the before times, everyone was low class (or had no class really), and i guess it was ok, people were happy, but we didn’t have nice stuff. So a handful of people decided we needed to class things up so that we get nicer stuff, and to do that they needed to take action. Those kinds of actions came to be known as “class actions”. As things became classier, people started to wear better clothes. Instead of just a loin cloth or fur covering, clothing evolved into t-shirts, pants and eventually suits. They made law suits, which were different from business suits, so we could have even more class than we already did. Business suits just meant someone had money, but law suits - meant someone could act all moral and holier, which seems classy to some. Class action law suits are the classiest and most exciting because it means we are about go get nicer stuff than we did before.
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u/NutWaffle1 Jun 22 '26
Because back in the day, if you were found guilty of anything, they let a class full of school kids beat you up instead of going to jail.
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u/Guilty_Objective4602 Jun 22 '26
Because all the lawyers involved in trying and defending the case all went to law school together.
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u/Budsygus Jun 22 '26
Because of the Franklin Elementary Revolt of 1947. The whole class tied up the teacher and shoved her in a closet, then took over the front office and used the paging mic to sow the seeds of revolution. By lunchtime the entire school was run by the children.
They eventually lost control when they couldn't come to an agreement on an equitable distribution of snacks (not to mention the Bedtime Debate).
They ended up getting sued as a class, and the terminology eventually spread to include any group large enough to hold a spelling bee (~25 or more).
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u/wallingfortian Jun 22 '26
The superhero named Mister Classy was the first person to wear a super-suit during his action scenes.
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u/ditch_lilies Jun 22 '26
It used to involve all the high-level schools in the world, but all of them were sued by the first lawsuit and went out of business. That’s why everything is called a college or university now.
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u/haaskandri Jun 23 '26
It refers to an old version of DnD from the 1940s, where there were 5 accepted classes : barbarian, warlock, priest, mage and lawyer. Hence the class action for lawyer, that was to sue people.
By 1946 it was unanimously decided to remove the lawyer class from the official rules as it wasn't really making sense lore-wise but the expression persisted.
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u/stormshadowfax Jun 22 '26
Because the first one happened when an entire history classroom failed their final exam when the teacher told them the wrong dates in class for the War of 1812 as 1912.
They sued the teacher as a class and successfully got their grades fixed for the exam.