Only the government (e.g., federal, state, local) may bring a criminal suit.[1] But in both civil / criminal cases they are still a suit under the law seeking some form of ordered relief from the Court.

Essentially, you can think of "criminal" as a category of law and relief (e.g., prison) that is only accessible to the government.

Both the government and citizens may bring "civil" suits. Very generally, the remedies in civil suits are a court order to 1) stop doing a thing; 2) to do a thing required by law / agreement; 3) to transfer property, usually but not always money, from one party to another; or 4) to define a set of rules governing the parties going forward.

[1] There may be some obscure exception to this, but it is true for everything I've ever seen / heard of.

Generally, I would guess conferring with the client on the facts, briefing, preparing for a hearing, and arguing a hearing would be north of, at least, 25k, assuming a lower-end rate estimate in the $800+ range and a lower-end work estimate of 30+ hours. If I had to bet, I'd go higher than the low-end estimate: both the rate and hours could be close to double. That said, the attorney / firm could be donating the time on this one.

LESZEK BALCEROWICZ, Finance Minister, Poland, 1989-1991: Just after breakthrough, there is a short period, a period of extraordinary politics. By definition, people are ready to accept more radical solutions because they are pretty euphoric of freshly regained freedom. One could use it only in one way, by moving forward very, very quickly.

JOSEPH STANISLAW: Poland decided to do what Bolivia did, to introduce shock therapy, cut back on government expenditure and try and introduce a market system and see if it could work.

NARRATOR: Prices almost doubled, and shortages didn't end. All Balcerowicz could do was chew his nails and wait for the law of supply and demand to kick in. But then, after a few days, farmers began to bring their produce to market.

LESZEK BALCEROWICZ: I was going for a walk, and we were looking at the prices in the shops, the prices of eggs.

NARRATOR: His aides told him to concentrate on the price of eggs. If eggs appeared, if eggs got cheaper, the market would be working. Eggs did appear. And then the price of eggs began to fall.

LESZEK BALCEROWICZ: And I remember that very important day when the prices of eggs are falling. This was one of the signals that the program, the stabilization program, is working.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/t...

I get that it could get really complicated to do correctly, but even a fast and dirty version could be really interesting.

Perhaps, it might even encourage people to be interested in math.

The bigger point is that such an incentive exists and that it is further incentivized if the individuals who are harmed are deprived of a mechanism to resist.

Larger businesses have already gone to great lengths to eliminate / curtail class actions.

I'd argue that this weakening is the root cause of a chunk of the aggregate problems I see discussed on HN.

It is in a company's interest to harm a great many people a little bit because the people often have to challenge the company as individuals rather than as a group. And the economics often make no sense in that way, so the company is functionally immune to the effects of its harm.

Further weakening the remaining viability of that case type stands to only encourage companies to commit more aggregate harms.

Its chart shows that burglary led from 2016-2018, but asset forfeiture was ahead again in 2023.