Medieval Europe

• As far back as 1125 A.D. there is record of a few individuals' representing a large group of people in legal suits. Documents from England demonstrate that this form of representation was typically used when a village or agrarian community filed a suit as a unified whole.
  
  

First Suit

• The lawsuit that set the precedent for today's class-action suits was the Discart v. Otes case. In 1309, Master Otes, a wealthy landowner in the Channel Islands, demanded that all rent and other debts owed to him be paid in French, rather than local, currency. This made the debts owed nearly triple their original value. As a result, a large group of Islanders sued him. Jordan Discart, whose name was attached to the case, was the first to sue, and so became representative of all the tenants on Otes' land.
  
  

Rule 48

• U.S. law first introduced group litigation through Equity Rule 48, passed in 1833. It allowed for a group to be represented as a single entity when there were too many individuals to make single litigation efficient. The drawback was that all the members of the suing group had to be present at the time of litigation.
  
  

Rule 38

• Just after the turn of the 20th century Rule 48 was revised, and became Rule 38. The most significant change was that it allowed absent parties to be represented as members of the prosecuting class.
  
  

Rule 23

• In 1938, the Supreme Court merged its legal and equitable statutes, and Rule 38 became Rule 23. Rule 23 was significantly revised in 1966 to create the modern class-action lawsuit, which requires those who do not wish to become part of the suit to "opt out."