Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
Posts tagged as:
Are you a skilled writer capable of tackling the topic of class action abuse? A reformist group (not us) is looking for a freelancer, old media refugee or other skillful wordsmith to tackle what could be a substantial project. If you’re a serious candidate, drop a line at editor – at- this-domain-name – dot – com and I’ll forward it to the group doing the search (cross-posted from Point of Law).
{ 0 comments }
Class action plaintiffs claim that all three of Nintendo’s designs are defective [Colin Miller, Evidence Law Prof]
{ 9 comments }
A California federal court granted summary judgment to Hewlett-Packard against a plaintiff who “brought a putative class action against HP because its laser jet printers shut down printer operations before the toner cartridges are really empty. … The User Manual did not disclose that toner would remain in the cartridges when they reached ‘empty,’ but rather advised that the cartridges would yield up to 2,000 color pages.” [Russell Jackson; Baggett v. Hewlett-Packard, PDF]
{ 2 comments }
{ 2 comments }
After all, says the named Alabama plaintiff in a suit against AT&T Wireless, what if I save every penny and don’t want to spend the rebate money the way a debit card would make me do? [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
{ 7 comments }
Disgruntled California consumer Roy Werbel is the latest to file putative class-action complaints against the makers of Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries and Froot Loops because their products do not contain actual fruit or, as the case may be, froot. [SF Weekly and followup via Above the Law] Earlier coverage here, here, here, etc.
{ 3 comments }
Surely it would have been possible to line up a lead plaintiff who did not himself turn out to run a competing collection agency [ABA Journal]
{ 1 comment }
Paul Karlsgodt wonders how to separate the news value from the hype, and hears about some of the purposes they may serve for the lawyers.
Karen Lee Torre, in the Sep. 28 Connecticut Law Tribune, hates cy pres even more than I do. See also Peggy Little at Point of Law.
{ 2 comments }
Sean Wajert on a class action filed against Bayer:
Plaintiffs are consumers who claim to have purchased Bayer combination aspirin and dietary supplement products. They do not claim that they were injured by these products or that the products were ineffective. Instead, plaintiffs seek damages because they say they would not have purchased these products if they had known that Bayer, instead of submitting a New Drug Application (“NDA”) for each of these combination products, relied on the preexisting separate regulatory review of aspirin and the supplements.
More: Ron Miller.
{ 1 comment }
Per the New York Post, “The Brooklyn man who filed a $5 million class-action suit against Match.com over his unanswered e-mails has quit the case due to ‘the amount of ridicule’ he had to endure from ’sensationalized media coverage.’” Earlier here.
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.
{ 3 comments }
Class action impresario Bill Lerach’s old Lerach Coughlin firm, now renamed Coughlin Stoia, continues to prosper mightily despite the imprisonment of its former principal, but federal judge James Rosenbaum in Minnesota has now knocked $45 million off a $110 million fee request in a settlement of a class action against UnitedHealth, saying the firm would probably not have been selected as lead counsel had Lerach “timely and fully” disclosed to the court his status as a target of federal investigation. The lead plaintiff in the case was CALPERS, the California public employee pension fund that has long enjoyed cozy relations with politicians, unions and prominent class-actioneers. [Dan Levine, The Recorder/Law.com]
The New York Post reports on a putative class action brought by Marc Verzani complaining that Costco’s 16-oz shrimp platter doesn’t hold 16 ounces of shrimp. The SDNY judge noted that the platter holds other materials such as sauce and lemon wedges, and simultaneously denied and ridiculed the preliminary injunction motion. Verzani was alleging $40 million in annual damages.
{ 10 comments }
With a million dollars of attorneys’ fees at stake, the trial lawyers in the infamous Grand Theft Auto case appealed the lower court decertification ruling to the Second Circuit.
In response, I filed this brief today.
{ 6 comments }
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.).
{ 1 comment }
Those of you who remember my earlier posts about the settlement and my brief on behalf of objectors might be interested in seeing the briefs that putatively settling plaintiffs and defendants submitted in support of the settlement.
So as not to clutter Overlawyered with these posts, I have started a new weblog focusing on my class action work. You can also keep up with this work by becoming a Facebook supporter of the Center for Class Action Fairness.
{ 2 comments }
A rain check on KFC’s hugely popular grilled-chicken offer isn’t good enough, say the class-action-seekers. [L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune via Obscure Store, WSJ Law Blog]
Point of Law Volokh