Short answer. Yes, as a class suit. Where the controversy is of common or general interest to many people too numerous to all join as parties, a sufficiently numerous and representative group may sue or defend for the benefit of everyone, while any interested party can still intervene to protect their own interest.
What the law says
When the subject matter of the controversy is one of common or general interest to many persons so numerous that it is impracticable to join all as parties, a number of them which the court finds to be sufficiently numerous and representative as to fully protect the interests of all concerned may sue or defend for the benefit of all. Any party in interest shall have the right to intervene to protect his individual interest.
Rule 3, Section 12 — Class suit. Read the full provision →
Two conditions have to be met before a class suit applies
The subject matter must be one of common or general interest to many persons, and those persons must be so numerous that it is impracticable to join all as parties. A dispute genuinely shared by a large group, where requiring every single person to be individually named would be unworkable, is what this mechanism is built to accommodate.
The representatives have to be numerous and representative enough
It is not enough that some subset of the affected group steps forward. The court itself must find that the number suing is sufficiently numerous and representative as to fully protect the interests of all concerned. A handful of people who do not adequately represent the range of interests within the larger group would not satisfy this standard on their own.
Anyone in the group can still step in individually
The class suit mechanism does not force every affected person to rely entirely on the named representatives. The rule preserves that any party in interest shall have the right to intervene to protect his individual interest — someone in the broader class who feels their particular interest needs separate attention can still join the case directly rather than depend solely on the representatives.
This intervention right is a real safeguard against a representative group that turns out not to fully align with every member's interests.
Why this matters for a community with a shared problem
This rule is what makes it practical for a genuinely large group — an entire neighborhood, a community affected by the same environmental harm, or a similarly situated class of people — to obtain a single judicial resolution of a shared problem, instead of requiring hundreds or thousands of nearly identical individual lawsuits over the exact same underlying controversy and set of facts.