More background reading on the Draconian consumer product safety law:
- Fear of losing even more high-quality German toy suppliers [Kathy + Matt Take Milwaukee]
- Mattel will pay $13 million to 20 plaintiff’s firms
to resolve class action over toy recalls; claimed value of settlement to class (vouchers, etc.) is something like $37 million [National Law Journal, Coughlin Stoia release; earlier] Note also Rick Woldenberg’s March analysis of one recall (recall of 436,000 units premised on two cans of bad paint).
- New law “has added several new tasks [to the CPSC], many of which most charitably can be described as marginal in the overall pursuit of product safety that will divert staff and financial resources from more important safety issues.” [attorney Michael Brown, quoted at Handmade Toy Alliance Blog]
- Alarmist reporting on Boston’s WBZ affords a glimpse of
“the scary people behind the law” [Woldenberg]
- Effort to help move blogger Kevin Drum up the CPSIA learning curve [Coyote]
- “The “Resale Round-up,” launched by the CPSC, finally limits the power of these merchants of death who recklessly barter second-hand toys to unsuspecting civilians at low prices…. The only question now is how did any of us survive this long?” [David Harsanyi, Denver Post]
- Among its other effects, the statute “will boost opportunities for mass-tort suits” [Crain's Chicago Business]
- Law’s “continuing disaster for small business” illustrates
difference between crony capitalism and the real kind [James DeLong, The American, with kind words for a certain "indispensable" website that's covered the law]
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Ethel Everett, illustrator, Nursery Rhymes (1900), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
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accolades,
class action settlements,
Coughlin Stoia,
CPSC,
CPSIA,
small business
Russell Jackson on Dannon’s proposed deal to resolve class action lawsuits (see Jan. 24, 2008) over its promotion of its Activia and DanActive lines as beneficial to health:
The proposed settlement also contains “equitable relief” in the form of restrictions on advertising and labeling. Reading these so-called restrictions, I am struck by the fact that the statements challenged in these lawsuits clearly were not false. Indeed, if I were still teaching my Product Liability course, I would ask my students to study this settlement and tell me whom they trust the most to issue restrictions on speech based on the results of scientific research: lawyers (as here), judges, juries, or scientists employed by regulatory bodies.
Lawyers want $10 million plus expenses, while Dannon’s outlays will depend in part on how many consumers file claims (via Calif. Civil Justice).
P.S. Should have caught this before: Ted discussed this case yesterday at his Center for Class Action Fairness blog.
Tagged as:
advertising,
class action settlements
Tagged as:
ACORN,
Barack Obama,
class action settlements,
Florida,
land use and zoning,
libel slander and defamation,
Massachusetts,
newspapers,
privacy,
restaurants,
schools
- There are “almost certainly” many innocent persons in prison today wrongly convicted of shaking a baby to death [Radley Balko, Reason] Harris County, Texas forensic examiner under scrutiny [same, Reason "Hit and Run"] L.A. Times on forensics reform [same]
- Feds order large private insurer Humana to pull criticisms of Obama health plan from its website [David Henderson, Eugene Volokh and followup]
- Why would anyone market lawyers’ services through blog comment spam? Especially at Popehat? [first and second posts]
- “Revolving door” for officials of regulatory agencies tends to lead to law firms [Naked Capitalism]
- Tenure trouble: teacher’s union head “would protect a dead body in the classroom” [Ron Bailey, Reason on Brill "Rubber Room" article, earlier]
- Google asked to unmask user in another defamation suit (Turks & Caicos developer) [Brian Kumnick, FindLaw "Injured"]
- “Fired Ave Maria Law Prof Gets Tenure in Whistle-Blower Settlement, Lawyer Says” [ABA Journal, background Washington Monthly]
- Ted Frank on Ameritrade settlement [Center for Class Action Fairness, earlier]
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
free speech,
Google,
Houston,
law schools,
teacher tenure,
Ted Frank
Pitney Bowes, the office supply giant, will pay some Georgia lawyers $950,000 and make available discount coupons to class members to settle charges that it improperly sent faxes to customers of a toner business it bought in 2007. [Fulton County Daily Report] I’ve written and blogged about the junk-fax law here as well as on this site.
Tagged as:
class action settlements
The Sep. 21 issue of Forbes magazine, now on newsstands, has a lengthy profile by Dan Fisher of my founding of the Center for Class Action Fairness, complete with a photo of my ugly mug gracing the story.
Of interest is a new revelation in the infamous Toshiba class action:
After few consumers availed themselves of a $2 billion settlement over supposedly defective laptop computers in 2000, for example, Toshiba America handed $353 million to a Beaumont charity whose chairman was plaintiff attorney Wayne Reaud, the lawyer on the case. Six years later the charity was still sitting on $250 million and the Texas attorney general sued for breach of fiduciary duty, including paying its president, W. Frank Newton, $560,000 in 2004. Newton is the former president of the State Bar of Texas.
Tagged as:
CCAF,
class action settlements,
class actions,
cy pres,
ethics,
South Texas,
Ted Frank
The settlement discussed in this space July 17 — in which lawyers nabbed more than $25 million in fees and expenses, while fewer than 100 consumers redeemed Ford coupons worth $37,500 — was covered by the Associated Press last week, which stirred outrage in many quarters [Krauss/PoL, Greenfield, Cal Biz Lit]. As Cal Civil Justice notes, the settlement was purportedly on behalf of owners who suffered no rollover or other mishap. Instead, it sought damages for losses in the vehicle’s resale value due to adverse publicity, a nicely circular theory, since the adverse publicity was in good measure propelled by various allies of the plaintiff’s bar. Interestingly, several groups that had opposed the settlement dropped their objections after it was rejiggered to require Ford to provide a $950,000 donation to what are described as nonprofit auto-safety groups (which ones?). Plaintiff’s firm Lieff Cabraser, in a letter to AP, cited that and changes in Ford advertising as reasons why the settlement provided more benefit to the customer class than can be measured by the coupons alone.
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
cy pres,
Ford,
Ford Explorer,
Lieff Cabraser
“Hank Adorno, head of the nation’s largest minority-owned law firm, violated nine Florida Bar rules when he engineered a $7 million class action settlement that distributed money to only seven people instead of all Miami taxpayers, the state regulatory agency for attorneys claims.” [Billy Shields, Daily Business Review and Law.com; earlier here and here]
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
Florida,
taxpayers
- “Plaintiffs’ Attorneys to Get $800,000 in Preliminary Settlement, Class Members Receive Zero” [Calif. Civil Justice covering Bluetooth settlement in which Ted was objector; earlier here and here]
- “Lawyer Jailed for Contempt Is Freed After 14 Years” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Money makes the signals go ’round: another probe of red-light cameras yields few surprises [Chicago Tribune, Chicago Bungalow, Bainbridge on Washington, D.C.]
- Previously little-known company surfaces in E.D. Tex. to claim Apple, many other companies violate its patent for touchpads [AppleInsider via @JohnLobert]
- Child endangerment saga of mom who left kids at Montana mall is now a national story [ABC News; earlier post with many comments; Free Range Kids and more]
- Meet Obama Administration “special adviser on ‘green’ jobs” Van Jones ["Dunphy", McCarthy at NRO "Corner"]
- Irrationality of furloughs at University of Wisconsin should provide yet another ground to question New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act [Coyote]
- Australia’s internet blacklist is so secret you can’t even find out what sites are on it [Popehat - language] Oz to block online video games unsuitable for those under 15 [BoingBoing]
Tagged as:
Apple,
Australia,
class action settlements,
contempt,
Eastern District of Texas,
online speech,
patent litigation,
red light cameras,
wage and hour suits
Sacramento Bee:
Fewer than 100 consumers out of a million covered in a class-action lawsuit settled in Sacramento Superior Court have redeemed coupons to buy a new Ford, but that hasn’t stopped their lawyers from cashing in on a sweet payday.
So far, the dollar value remitted to plaintiffs in the Ford Explorer rollover class-action lawsuit has added up to about $37,500. Meanwhile, squadrons of lawyers from 13 firms from Sacramento to Woodbridge, N.J., have raked in more than $25 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses.
More: The Recorder. And Ted in comments flags our coverage of the case two years ago.
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
Ford,
Ford Explorer
Before asking a federal judge to grant preliminary approval for a class action settlement with Ameritrade over alleged privacy breaches, make sure that your “client,” the class representative, isn’t going to tell the court he opposes the settlement. In re TD Ameritrade Account Holder Litigation, Case No. C 07-2852 VRW (N.D. Cal.) ($1.87M for the attorneys, coupons for the class.).
Tagged as:
CCAF,
class action settlements,
class actions,
coupon settlements,
don't,
privacy
A belated update: Earlier this year (Feb. 5, Feb. 10) we brought word of a Los Angeles case in which a judge ruled that a class action lawyer who had obtained gift cards but not cash for the client class (in a suit against Windsor Fashions) should himself be paid his fee in gift cards. Turns out that didn’t last long: Per the L.A. Times, “Another judge overturned the order in February and awarded Yorba Linda lawyer Neil B. Fineman $125,000 in fees instead of gift cards.”
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
class action settlements
