单选题 .  When the letter arrived, I almost threw it out. The paragraphs of legal gibberish about "persons who entered into FX instruments" sounded confusing. But the warning at the top grabbed me: "Please read this entire notice carefully...Your rights may be affected." This was an official missive from the US federal court about one of those class-action lawsuits that American businesses routinely complain about. In them, lawyers sue on behalf of a single plaintiff but allege that he or she represents a huge group of people who have all been wronged in similar ways. If a judge agrees to let the case go forward, most companies settle rather than risk a huge trial judgment. The lawyers get a cut of the money, and the rest is split between the members of the "class" once they have been tracked down.
    This particular letter related to a foreign exchange rate-rigging scandal that I spent two years covering nearly half a decade ago. A string of global banks have paid more than $10bn in fines to settle allegations that their traders colluded to move the rates, so the banks—rather than their customers—got the best side of foreign exchange deals. Why were they writing to me? Regulators had described the victims as active forex traders and companies using derivatives to hedge currency risk. I own stocks, bonds and mutual funds, but no one would mistake me for a day trader. But I do have current accounts in the US and UK and have moved money between them. It turned out that i5 lenders had agreed to pay $2.3bn to compensate overcharged customers, including Barclays and JPMorgan—the two I personally held accounts with.
    Christopher Burke, the lawyer appointed by the court to represent the class, told me the banks had supplied the list of roughly 200,000 potential victims who had been bilked on the pound/dollar exchange rate between 2003 and 2015. Barclays said I wasn't on their list; JPMorgan declined to comment. Given that I was not moving massive amounts of money around, I am not going to get rich off this case. If half of all victims claim their share Burke predicts: "We'll send you at least enough to have a nice drink." This is not the first time I have won the financial scandal equivalent of a low-level lottery prize. In 2003-4, US regulators brought cases against mutual fund companies who allowed hedge funds to "market time" their funds. Share prices move constantly, while mutual funds are priced once a day. By trading in and out, hedge funds could reap short-term profits, drive up costs and siphon gains from retail investors.
    Over the next three years, I received a series of cheques—$100 here, $250 there—as each mutual fund company was forced to make restitution to hundreds of thousands of small investors. Business groups complain about class-action lawyers, saying they bring frivolous cases that tie up court time and charge too much in fees. But advocates point out that the US system is set up to rely on private legal action to force bad companies to pay restitution. Mass lawsuits make justice affordable for small claimants without the money or expertise to bring their own claim. And Burke adds there are plans to cap lawyers' fees and administration costs at less than 20% of the total settlement.
    While the size of the cheques I have received may be small, fines and class-action lawsuits provide a big deterrent. "If you make the banks pay for their wrongs, you're making it so that it becomes unprofitable for them to rip people off," says Michael Hausfeld, the other lead lawyer in the forex case. US enthusiasm for class-action cases shows no sign of abating—aggrieved investors filed new securities class-action cases at a record-breaking pace in the first half of 2017.
    The practice has spread to Europe. Dutch litigants have brought collective action cases since 2005, and the UK allowed group litigation in 2015. Last month, a consumer group called Google You Owe Us announced plans for a collective case against the US tech group, seeking compensation for iPhone users who were allegedly snooped on through a browser flaw between 2011 and 2012. Google has already paid more than $30m in fines to US regulators and state attorneys-general over its use of the iPhone flaw. But the company said it intends to contest the UK case and points out that it has already beaten a US class-action case over the issue. Naturally, I had a British iPhone at the time, so I will be watching with interest.16.  What might be the best title for the passage? ______