A lot of times people refer to a mass tort and a class action as though they are the same thing but they’re actually very different. In a mass tort case you’ll have a large number of people who have been affected by a certain practice, typically a product liability case, and they each bring their case individually in court but those claims are then aggregated or coordinated and consolidated in one court; that’s a mass tort. In a class action you have a large number of people who have also been affected by a practice but one person steps forward to represent all the other people who have been similarly affected, and so the case then proceeds as a class action with a class representative representing the interests of all the absent class members; those people don’t have to step forward like they do in a mass tort.