Le azioni di classe nel settore alimentare

The article deals with the role that a s.c. “class action” can play in the food sector, trying to find out food-related peculiarities (if any), and starting from its dominant features: its collective nature, the plural nature of the subject involved on the plaintiff side, and the homogeneity of the rights that can fall under the application of the action, while – with regard to their content – those rights continue to refer to individuals. Rather than deepening the way the class action works from a case law perspective (since many scholars have already well done such a research), the author prefers addressing, with some “law and economics” inputs, the fundamental economic needs that lead legislator to create an “Italian” class action, based on the needs that are generally perceived in other legal orders where the class action has a more consolidated tradition, and searching for the particular utilities that, in the food sector, could result especially for consumers.