Standing

Whether you personally were harmed enough to sue.

Standing is the requirement that you suffered a concrete injury traceable to the defendant’s conduct. A practice you disapprove of but were never charged for does not give you standing.

In data cases this gets contested hard: whether exposure of your information is itself a concrete injury is heavily litigated.

Related terms

• Class action - One lawsuit brought on behalf of everyone harmed the same way.
• Class representative - The named person who stands in for the whole class.
• Class certification - The court ruling that lets one case speak for everyone.
• Arbitration clause - Contract language sending disputes to a private forum instead of court.
• Class-action waiver - A term saying you may only bring a claim for yourself, never as a group.
• Unconscionability - A contract term so one-sided a court refuses to enforce it.
• Contract of adhesion - A take-it-or-leave-it contract with no room to negotiate.
• Assent - Whether you actually agreed, and how the company proved it.