A 2002 class-action settlement against cable purveyor MediaOne (now Comcast) over alleged overcharges resulted in a payout to consumers ballyhooed at $17 million, with $3 million going to fees for class counsel. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam tries to find out how much of that $17 million was actually paid to consumers, and — imagine! — gets blown off by both the company and the lawyers. He also tries to check out how much consumers actually received from a settlement against the Poland Spring water company (see Feb. 2, Sept. 10) that was billed as being worth $8 million, with $1.35 million to the lawyers. The lawyer he reaches tells Beam he has no idea, and the company never gets back to him. All’s well with the system (Jun. 17).
Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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Point of Law- Preemption and national banks: Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, cont'dKevin Funnell at Bank Lawyers' Blog says Justice Scalia's majority opinion is not nearly as helpful to broad regulatory efforts by state AGs as one might have thought from some of the first reports. Earlier coverage here.... […]Walter Olson
- Chinese drywall litigationA report from New Orleans.... […]Walter Olson
- F. Vincent Vernuccio, "A Primer on the Employee Free Choice Act's Arbitration Provision"A case against government-imposed first contracts (PDF) from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. More: Jackson Lewis.... […]Walter Olson
- Adverse selection and insurance regulationRegulation of sectors like health and auto insurance is often explained as an response to market failures arising from adverse selection, but, say Alex Tabarrok and Bryan Caplan, most of the real-world elements of regulation are hard to explain that... […]Walter Olson
- Lawmakers who wear two hats, cont'dAs noted Thursday, a Brooklyn state senator with clout over the issue of city school reorganization simultaneously, as a private attorney, represents a former assistant principal suing Chancellor Joel Klein for wrongful termination. The problem of two-hatted state lawmaker/attorneys is... […]Walter Olson
- Preemption and national banks: Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, cont'd
- Volokh
- Democracy and Political Knowledge in Ancient Athens - Why Ancient Athenian Voters Were Not as Ignorant as We Have Been Taught to Think:Josiah Ober's excellent recent book Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens challenges one of the oldest bits of conventional wisdom in political theory: the idea that the... […]Ilya Somin
- Illinois Faculty Respond to the Tribune:Larry Ribstein has posted a copy of a lengthy open letter from several prominent members of the University of Illinois School of Law faculty responding to the Chicago Tribune's breathless... […]Jonathan Adler
- No Money Down Mortgages--A Predictable Problem:On Friday, co-blogger Kenneth linked to this piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining that the main cause of the "foreclosure crisis" is no-money-down mortgages. The author of the... […]David Bernstein
- Are Law Schools Relevant to the Future of Law?Bill Henderson ponders whether law schools are preparing their students -- or themselves -- for the future. As with so much that Henderson writes, it's a must read for those... […]Jonathan Adler
- I Met Frederick Douglass Today:... […]Randy Barnett
- Democracy and Political Knowledge in Ancient Athens - Why Ancient Athenian Voters Were Not as Ignorant as We Have Been Taught to Think:
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