MONTGOMERY — Attorney General Luther Strange recently hailed a U.S. Supreme Court decision clarifying that persons filing lawsuits must be able to prove actual harm.

The ruling serves to place limits on costly class action lawsuits based on technical violations of the law in which persons have suffered no actual damage.

On May 16, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 in favor of the on-line company Spokeo in a lawsuit from a plaintiff who had been unable to prove actual harm.  The high court returned the case to the lower court for reconsideration.

Strange filed an amicus brief in July 2015, which included eight other states. The brief urged SCOTUS to “follow the principles enshrined in the Constitution and restore the actual harm requirement to our system of litigation.” Other states included Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Strange said the decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins addressed a legal flaw exposing American businesses to class actions seeking millions — if not billions — of dollars in awards for litigants who have suffered no actual damages. He added the “no-harm, windfall class actions” are the result of a startling loophole in the law.

Strange noted that over the past several decades, Congress has enacted an “alphabet soup of statutes” with acronyms like RESPA, the FCRA, the FDCPA and the DPPA that are intended to protect consumers from abusive practices. He added these laws allow aggrieved parties to not only recover for their injuries, but also award statutory damages, typically $1,000 per violation. But what was intended as a mechanism to streamline recovery for consumers with legitimate complaints, he continued, has allowed creative litigants to file actions based on technical statutory violations that harm no one.

“Laws protecting consumers from unfair practices are important, but they have been abused,” Strange said. “The Supreme Court’s decision ensures that these laws are used as they were intended — not to line the pockets of innovative plaintiffs, but to right wrongs and to make the injured whole.”