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WHILE addressing a conference of those who administer consumer justice in the country, the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, underscored the need for promoting class action suits as an effective method of correcting systemic faults. According to Chidambaram, class action was a far more powerful weapon than public interest litigation and could set right many consumer grievances. Whenever a complaint that came before the courts pointed to a systemic fault, the presidents of the consumer courts should encourage consumers to come together and file a class action suit instead of a complaint that redresses only an individual grievance. Take the case of M.J Tirmazi, who died young as a result of a fall from his new, but defective, scooter. Even after the scooter was tested at a laboratory and its axle was found to be defective, the manufacturers tried to avoid their liability by claiming that it was not a manufacturing fault. A member of the Gujarat State Commission reminded the manufacturer how the Commission had adjudicated over two more similar cases earlier pertaining to the same brand of vehicle.(Jalaluddin Yusuflali, case no 259 of 1991, decided in 1994). Now this could well mean that there was something seriously wrong with the vehicle and if that was so, every effort should have been made to prevent similar accidents by asking the manufacturer to test, through an independent agency, the road worthiness of the vehicle and withdraw the entire batch of defective vehicles and refund the cost of the vehicle and compensation if any, to the consumer. They could well have converted this into a major class action suit, which, in one go, would have given relief to all those who had bought the defective vehicle. It would have also sent out a clear message to other manufacturers that consumer courts will not condone any laxity in safety. Similarly, some years ago, when hundreds of consumers in Delhi suffered the effects of dropsy on account of adulteration of mustard oil with argemone oil, the courts should have encouraged individuals, who filed complaints seeking compensation, to file class action suits. In such cases, the state government itself should file similar suits on behalf of all affected citizens. Unlike in North America, we rarely use the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act to file class action suits. There have been only a handful of such cases so far. One of the earliest class action suits was filed by the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat on behalf of 934 consumers who had not received the advance deposit of Rs 500 paid by them, following the cancellation of their scooter bookings. Later, the Delhi Grahak Panchayat also joined as an intervener. The National Consumer Disputes Redresssal Commission, in this case, ordered the company to pay back the money along with interest, to all the depositors, including those whose name were not in the petition and release Rs 50 lakh towards this every month, till it paid all the depositors. |
