The case that started me on the path to founding the Center for Class Action Fairness is now over: plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their appeal last week after voluntarily dismissing the court case February 22, giving up any shot at the $1 million in attorneys’ fees they had negotiated for themselves.
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6 Comments
Job well done, young man.
That law firm must really hate you.
Must hate you a million different ways…
Ted, Is this a result of your objection?
My understanding is that the Plaintiff bar will get $200 million from the proposed Trade Center Settlement.
Since the work was outdoors where the air continuously refreshed itself, since great efforts were made to provide workers with respirators if they wanted to use them, since none of the monitoring instruments at the site found any meaningful levels of toxins (One reading at one time is claimed.), and since there were no problems with the search dogs at the site; it stains common sense that any of the 5,000 claims are valid. None of the payments is justified.
I wonder if Ted Frank can object to this settlement. He did a great job on the Grand Theft Auto Case.
@AK: I would argue yes: I was the only substantive objection, and the court decertified the settlement after the fairness hearing—which she would have no incentive to do if there had simply been a joint motion to approve the settlement.
@William: I would need a client with standing to object, and even then, I’d need a basis to object. Your complaint is with your federal legislator, who gave New York City a free billion dollars to play with to litigate and settle the case. Given that the City had already spent $200 million on defense lawyers, and given that there’s no loser-pays rule, the settlement is perhaps the best the City can do, especially given the political demands for settlement. (When I testified before Congress twice on the issue, I saw no political will not to settle, and plenty of legislators ready to throw more money at the issue.) I haven’t analyzed the settlement to see how they get around the Amchem problem.