-Every day five class action lawsuits are filed in California. That is the finding of the Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC), which publicly released this number on October 16 at a San Francisco conference titled "Litigation in California -- It's Everybody's Business," hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

CJAC is to be applauded for being the first to estimate the number of class actions filed in California. State and local governments and court systems do not uniformly track this information. CJAC contracted with a law firm to look at each case filed in six major California counties during a three-year period and to count the class actions. The results are revealing.

From July 2004 through June 2005 (a fiscal year), there were about 975 class actions filed. That number jumped to about 1,200 in fiscal year 2005-2006, and went up to nearly 1,300 cases in 2006-2007. In California anyway, the federal "Class-Action Fairness Act," enacted in 2005, hasn't put a dent in the number of class actions filed in California state courts -- the number has actually increased slightly since the federal law went into effect.

Overall, 3,429 class actions were filed during this three-year period -- about five filings each day! 50% of the cases were filed in Los Angeles County, 15% in San Francisco, 14% in San Diego, 11% in Orange, 7% in Alameda, and 3% in Santa Clara. 47% of the combined cases dealt with employment law; 36% consumer actions; 6% environment; 5% civil rights, governmental, or construction defect; 3% product liability; and 3% shareholder. But get this, in 46% of the cases, the defendant was a government agency! Class action abuse hits California taxpayers directly.

This is the first systematic data I have seen on the number of class actions filed in any state. So, once again, California has led the way. Unfortunately, California has not led the way on class action reform -- many states have chosen to make comprehensive class action reform a top legislative priority and have passed meaningful reforms to stop class action/mass tort lawsuit abuse. California has not and will not anytime soon.

That was another news item at the conference: The prospects now look dim for an initiative to make it to the California ballot in 2008 that would reform class action rules in the Golden State. It now looks like the daily filings will have to grow to 6, 7, 8, or more in California before it will be addressed. In the meantime, the class action lottery will explode in California as lawyers pick up their practices in states that have adopted meaningful reform and move them here to seek greener pastures. Look for class action lawsuit abuse to grow in California before the problem is addressed.