- Big win for Ted Frank against cy pres slush funds [CCAF, Fisher, Zywicki, CL&P, @tedfrank ("Ninth Circuit rules in my favor ... but I still think I'm right".)]
- “Can the Vatican Be Subject to ICC Prosecution?” [Ku/OJ]
- “Tennessee: ATS Sues City Over Right Turn Ticket Money” [The Newspaper]
- “Law firms dominating campaign contributions to Obama” [WaPo]
- Does that mean it’s an entitlement? Punitive damage limits face constitutional challenges in Arkansas, Missouri [Cal Punitives]
- Businessman sues to silence critical blogger, case is dismissed, now files suit #2 [Scott Greenfield]
- Going Hollywood? “The Supreme Court should move to Los Angeles” [Conor Friedersdorf]
Tagged as:
Arkansas,
Barack Obama,
bloggers and the law,
Catholic Church,
cy pres,
Missouri,
punitive damages,
red light cameras,
Supreme Court,
Ted Frank
Further on stories we’ve noted in the past:
- Objectors including CCAF and CEI challenge Cobell Indian trust settlement [Legal Times, PoL, earlier]
- Post-mortems continue on Ohio S.B. 5 labor measure [Daniel DiSalvo, Christian Schneider, earlier]
- More on divorced man’s dogged pursuit of case against wedding photographer [Above the Law, earlier]
- Arkansas AG McDaniel: I’ll stop steering cy pres funds to charities [Arkansas Project, PoL, earlier]
- Rochester: “Police Union Punishes DA’s Office for Not Illegally Charging Woman Who Recorded Cops” [Radley Balko, earlier]
- “Men at Work lose appeal over Kookaburra riff” [Guardian via Legal Blog Watch, earlier here, etc.]
- Wash. Supreme Court overturns woman’s horn-honking conviction [Seattle Times, opinion PDF, earlier here, here]
Tagged as:
Arkansas,
cy pres
- Behind the antitrust assault on Google [Jerry Brito, Josh Wright, more]
- Rapid rise of lawsuit lenders [WSJ] And a Searle Civil Justice Institute conference on third party financing of litigation;
- More law firms muscle into class action against e-book publishers [PaidContent] Fifth Circuit questions cy pres [Trask] And a new edition of the Federalist Society’s Class Action Watch is out;
- When the house painters announce they’re not leaving: “Britain plans to tighten anti-squatter laws” [NYT]
- “Courts Call Out Copyright Trolls’ Coercive Business Model, Threaten Sanctions” [EFF] “Righthaven’s Copyright Trolling is a Bankrupt Idea” [Cit Media Law] More: Vegas Inc.
- “Twombly is the Logical Extension of the Mathews v. Eldridge Test to Discovery” [Andrew Blair-Stanek via Volokh, Frank] “Four more reasons to love TwIqbal” [Beck] “O’Scannlain says 9th Circ has adopted ‘Iqbal lite’ pleading standard, ‘Same insufficient complaints, fewer dismissals!’” [@ScottKGraham on dissent in Starr v. County of Los Angeles, PDF]
- Florida farms sell raw milk as (wink) “pet food” [Sun-Sentinel]
Tagged as:
antitrust,
class actions,
cy pres,
food safety,
Google,
litigation finance,
pleading,
RightHaven
- Educator: please don’t bring lawyers to parent-teacher meetings [Ron Clark, CNN] Steve Brill: what I found when I investigated NYC teacher “rubber rooms” [Reuters] “The Six Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety” [Cracked] School waterfall liability [Lincoln, Neb. Journal-Star]
- As predicted: “Dodd-Frank Paperwork a Bonanza for Consultants and Lawyers” [NYT]
- “Running out of common drugs” [Josh Bloom, NY Post] Pharmaceutical shortages: the role of Medicare price controls [Richard Epstein, Hoover; earlier here, here, etc.]
- DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online. Yoo-hoo, privacy advocates? [Steve Chapman]
- New class action law in Mexico includes loser-pays provision [WSJ]
- Newt Gingrich candidacy revives memories of his 1995 call for death penalty (with “mass executions”) for drug smuggling [NYT archive via Josh Barro; see also @timothy_watson "Sounds kinda like Shariah Law to me.")
- "Cy pres slush fund in Georgia under ethics investigation" [PoL]
Tagged as:
aviation,
class actions,
cy pres,
Georgia,
illegal drugs,
loser pays,
Mexico,
pharmaceuticals,
schools,
teacher tenure
Ted Frank’s class action settlement reform group, the Center for Class Action Fairness, has announced “multiple victories” in ongoing cases arising from settlements by Apple, Classmates.com, Toyota, HP, and gasoline retailers. Among the topics addressed in objection: exaggeration of benefits supposedly provided for the class, excessive attorney fees, and diversion of proceeds to groups unrelated to the class. Details here.
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
cy pres,
Ted Frank
- New Yorker suing boss for $2M because working in New Jersey caused him “anguish” [Biz Insider]
- British lawyer’s libel threats impede UK publication of Paul Offit vaccine book [Respectful Insolence]
- Lawsuit settlement leads to Florida push to curb tobacco discounter [WSJ; background, Jeremy Bulow]
- Allegation: attorneys made personal use of cy pres fund in Armenian genocide settlement [PoL]
- “Telecommuting employees raise special wage and hour issues” [Hyman]
- UK bias cops wonder whether to ban gay-preferred along with gay-not-preferred guesthouses [Ed West, U.K. Telegraph]
- Copyright mills: “Local law firm wants to defend people sued by local law firm” [TBD] Related: [Citizen Media Law, Coleman]
- “Top 10 Reasons to Not Open a Bar or Restaurant in NYC” [NY Enterprise Report]
Tagged as:
cy pres,
fair housing,
libel slander and defamation,
New Jersey,
NYC,
restaurants,
RightHaven,
tobacco settlement,
vaccines,
wage and hour suits
Among its most insidious features, notes Ira Stoll, is a $2.5 million cy pres fund earmarked for “corporate governance programs at 12 universities across the country,” and which will predictably encourage such academic programs, at law schools and elsewhere, to align themselves further with the agenda of the plaintiff’s securities bar and against the interest of actual shareholders at companies like Apple. I’ve got much more about cy pres law school slush funds in Schools for Misrule, forthcoming. [Future of Capitalism; Jim at PoL]
Tagged as:
Apple,
colleges and universities,
cy pres,
Michael Bloomberg,
NYC
- Former producer at “Oprah” show — yearning for the simpler life? — takes job at rough blue-collar outfit. One $500K harassment settlement later… [Des Moines Register]
- “Insurer writing ‘loser pays’ policies to defendants” [LNL]
- “$1.4 Million Award Reversed due to Attorney’s ‘Inflammatory’ Comments” [DBR]
- New book examines shaky evidentiary basis of international criminal law convictions [Nancy Combs]
- Litigation slush funds, cont’d: new Department of Justice rules steer public settlement money to private advocacy groups [York, Examiner]
- Second Circuit upholds Judge Weinstein’s steps to curb conspiracy to evade protective order in Zyprexa case [Drug and Device Law, Dan Popeo, NYLJ] More from the busy Dr. David Egilman: “Plaintiff’s Expert Files Appeal in ‘Popcorn Lung’ Lawsuit” [On Point News and more] Also: “Being an Expert Expert Doesn’t Make You an Expert” [Zacher, Abnormal Use]
- “FTC Seeks to Clarify — and Justify — Its Blogger Endorsement Guidelines” [Citizen Media Law]
- “Winnebago cruise control” and suchlike urban legends are purposely devised and spread by sinister interests, or so claim L.A. Times and Prof. Turley [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
cy pres,
expert witnesses,
FTC endorsement rules,
harassment law,
international human rights,
Iowa,
loser pays
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has bestowed $100,000 to assist in construction of the Arkansas Fallen Firefighters Memorial on the grounds of the state Capitol. The money came from the settlement of a lawsuit against the Pfizer drug concern, the connection of which to the cause of fallen firefighters is at best obscure. [Arkansas Online]
Tagged as:
Arkansas,
attorneys general,
cy pres
Tagged as:
Canada,
cy pres,
failure to warn,
mortgages,
New Jersey,
OSHA,
product liability,
prosecution,
recreation,
Supreme Court,
Wal-Mart
- Shameless: House leadership exempts NRA lest it sink bill to regulate political speech [John Samples, Cato]
- Employment law: “Arbitration Showdown Looms Between Congress, Supreme Court” [Coyle, NLJ]
- “Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise” [Tamanaha, Balkinization]
- Move to allow international war crimes trials over “aggression,” a notoriously slippery term [Anderson, Brett Schaefer/NRO "Corner" via Ku]
- Litigation slush funds: “Cy pres bill in Ohio House” [Ted Frank, CCAF]
- “Recent Michigan Prosecutions for ‘Seducing an Unmarried Woman’” [Volokh]
- Scalia: “…least analytically rigorous and hence most subjective of law-school subjects, legal ethics” [LEF]
- Silicosis settlement scandal update: “As 2 Insurance Execs Admit Bribes, PI Lawyer Says He Can’t Be Retried” [Houston Chronicle via ABA Journal, earlier]
Tagged as:
arbitration,
campaign regulation,
cy pres,
ethics,
Houston,
insurance,
international human rights,
law schools,
Michigan,
Ohio,
silicosis
Some 60,000 cell-phone users who had signed up to receive “promotional messages” from Nextones.com in order to get a free ringtone got just such a text message on January 18, 2006 advertising a cell-phone-related Stephen King book. This resulted in a class action that was thrown out on the grounds that plaintiffs had agreed to “terms and conditions” permitting such cell-phone advertising; moreover, the federal law prohibiting the use of an automatic telephone dialing system applied only to systems that dialed numbers randomly or sequentially, and the defendants were operating off of a list of opt-in telephone numbers.
The Ninth Circuit reversed. The issue, it said, was not whether phone numbers were sequentially dialed, but whether the equipment used could hypothetically sequentially dial telephone numbers. It also held that there was a disputed issue of fact whether King’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, counted as an “affiliate.”
Faced with the prospect of going to trial and the risk of $500 to $1500 damages assessed for each call (i.e., $30 to $90 million in damages) defendants have settled. There is a settlement fund of $10 million established, plaintiffs can submit claims that will pay $175 (or a pro rata amount if the fund is exhausted) and plaintiffs’ attorneys will ask for $2.725 million from that fund.
This is superficially all well and good, but if the claim response is the all-too-typical 1%, the attorneys may well collect 27 times as much as the class will get. Indeed, assuming that $1 million for notice and administration disappears from the fund, the full $10 million won’t be paid out unless over half the class signs up. There is also a mysterious $250,000 “cy pres” award whose destination is not specified in the notice or in the settlement.
If you’re a class member who received the text message in 2006, congratulations, you can get free money: fill out a claim form before September 20 (and kudos to the parties for allowing claimants to do it online); if you’re a class member who has concerns about the settlement, contact me.
Tagged as:
advertising,
cellphones,
class action settlements,
class actions,
cy pres,
Ninth Circuit
The March 2 Wall Street Journal (link dead after 7 days) covers all-for-charity-none-for-the-class “cy pres” settlements of Facebook and AOL—the latter of which was the subject of a Center for Class Action Fairness objection:
Late last year, in a class action claiming that tech giant AOL LLC improperly inserted footers in its users’ emails, Los Angeles federal judge Christina Snyder awarded $25,000 in settlement funds to a Los Angeles legal-aid organization that has the judge’s husband on its board. …
The Virginia-based [sic] Center for Class Action Fairness objected, claiming the settlement raised a conflict of interest. Ted Frank, president of the group, said that to avoid potential conflicts, it would be better to require unclaimed settlement funds to be deposited into state coffers. “The problem is that parties can now give money to a judge’s preferred charity in the hopes that it will prompt the judge to rubber stamp a settlement,” he said.
Tagged as:
AOL,
CCAF,
class action settlements,
class actions,
cy pres,
Facebook,
Public Citizen
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
