What will likely happen, at least in California, is that the clerk will schedule all of the Equifax cases for the same day and the judge will hear them all at once, like a little miniature class action.

Yes. And that's the way around restrictions on class actions. Where the victims are identified and cooperating, and the cases are very similar, it works. There are some lawyers using this strategy. Huge numbers of cases are filed, they're all consolidated by a judge, and the end result is a suit on the merits.

The filing service needs to do more of the work, like shipping the paperwork off in bulk to a process server company to be formally delivered in daily batches.

Yep, and Equifax will hire some local firm for a small amount to take care of all of them that day.

> They can't show up to all of the cases brought against them.

Sure they can. If a suit is filed for $25K, do you really think Equifax cannot do the math of what a default judgment would cost? If all their attorneys are busy, they would hire more. Even if it had to be expensive temporary help, they would hire someone to show up.

I wonder how quickly / ably they could scale that. What if every US-based HN reader filed a suit?

Even better, what if every US HN user filed a small claims court case? I believe companies cannot hire lawyers to represent them there, they would need to send employees.

IANAL, but I am pretty sure we don't need to think out the details too far on this because the actual lawyers surely can play the systems better than non-lawyers from HN.

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

The no-lawyer in small claims rule doesn't apply to corporations. They usually send a paralegal or operations person who has some experience with legal matters and the relevant paperwork.

I'll go on the record and say that Equifax makes subpar quantitative decisions; i.e. cannot do the math.

And also that their attorneys, and their attorneys' attorneys, and their attorneys' attorneys' attorneys are very busy right now.