We covered the Seventh Circuit’s refusal to countenance in Mirfasihi v. Fleet Mortgage a collusive class-action settlement that benefited the attorneys but not the class members in January 2004; after remand, the parties went through the motions of jumping through hoops and returned with an economically identical settlement. The Seventh Circuit was not amused.
Interesting, and all too typical, statistic: out of the $2 million settlement pot, there were only $276,000 in claims filed by 190,000 class members, who apparently didn’t feel especially injured by Fleet Mortgage’s alleged wrongful practices of selling them products through telemarketing. (I wouldn’t oppose the death penalty for telemarketing, but that’s just me.)
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“(I wouldn’t oppose the death penalty for telemarketing, but that’s just me.)”
Believe me when I say it’s not just you.
I could support a “corporate death penalty” (dissolution of the offending business), anyway.
I rather suspect that many of the telemarketing victims would prefer to help stone the managers responsible to death rather than be paid a few bucks, but there’s that clause in the Constitution banning cruel and unusual punishment. Would that also ban publishing the managers’ home phone numbers and requiring them to keep the phones active, on a live ringer, and in their actual residence? Not that I’m recommending harrassment, now – we’d only allow each of the 190,000 victims to call once. đŸ˜‰