Keep in mind that class actions necessarily exist as a middle-ground mechanism. If the harm to each person were large enough, they would pursue individual clai

Keep in mind that class actions necessarily exist as a middle-ground mechanism. If the harm to each person were large enough, they would pursue individual claims. But in many cases, it is not worth people's time to pursue individual claims because the damage is relatively minor. A little bit of harm spread over a large enough population, however, becomes a large amount of harm in the aggregate, so class actions are a mechanism for holding companies accountable in those situations. So you would not expect individual members of the class to be getting huge payouts. But you expect that the company is held accountable for the aggregate harm in a way that, if not for class actions, they would likely never be held accountable for.