Hey, who hired *these* drivers, anyway? “Another Uber Technologies Inc. lawsuit settlement is under siege, with warring lawyers for drivers again trying to tear the deal apart.” [Insurance Journal]
Posts Tagged ‘class action settlements’
Liability roundup
- Uphill battle in Congress for bill to “prohibit federal courts from issuing awards that consider the victim’s race or gender, among other demographic variables” [Kim Soffen, Washington Post on “Fair Calculations Act”]
- Normalizing champerty, the Ann Arbor way: University of Michigan endowment to take stake in litigation finance fund [Janet Lorin, Bloomberg News]
- Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act (LARA), restoring sanctions for groundless litigation, cleared House committee vote last month [@HouseJudiciary]
- “Lynch’s Doubling of False Claims Act Fines Could Be Bonanza for Trial Lawyers” [Joe Schoffstall, Washington Free Beacon]
- “Katrina victims shocked by small payments in levee failure case they ‘won’ – $118 each, on average” [David Hammer, WWL-TV]
- Advisory Committee on Civil Rules considers revising Rule 23 on class actions [Washington Legal Foundation comments]
February 15 roundup
- Federal judge Wolf mulls appointing special master to investigate possible fee fraud in class action against State Street Bank [Boston Globe]
- Two lawyers start fighting on an airplane over a shared armrest, and it makes the papers [New York Post]
- Philly proposes mandatory sensitivity training for owners, employees of 11 gay bars [Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations report via Heat Street]
- Finally, some constraints on Mississippi Attorney General and longtime Overlawyered favorite Jim Hood? [Mississippi Business]
- One view of emergent controversy: “The Case Against National Injunctions, No Matter Who Is President” [Samuel Bray, LawFare, more from same author]
- “Court To Review Target’s $10M Customer Data Breach Settlement” [Consumerist; Minneapolis Star-Tribune; Ted Frank’s Center for Class Action Fairness is objecting]
- In or near Kansas? I’m speaking next week in Topeka at a Washburn University School of Law conference on the future of employment law [Feb. 23, details]
“The Met wins admission charge lawsuit, but lawyer may rack up $350K”
“The big winner from a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art over its recommended $25 admission charge is the plaintiffs’ lawyer — who is seeking a staggering $350,000 fee for handling a case that resulted in a nonmonetary settlement.” [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
More: Center for Class Action Fairness has objected.
February 8 roundup
- Freedom of association is at risk from California’s effort to crack open donor names of advocacy nonprofits [Ilya Shapiro on Cato Ninth Circuit amicus]
- “Center for Class Action Fairness wins big in Southwest Airlines coupons case, triples relief for class members” [CEI, earlier here, here]
- Campus kangaroo courts: KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. have spent a week guestblogging at Volokh on their new book (first, second, third, fourth, fifth, earlier links; plus Christina Hoff Sommers and WSJ video interviews with Stuart Taylor, Jr.]
- Despite his I’m-no-libertarian talk, two 2015 cases show Judge Neil Gorsuch alert to rights of Drug War defendants [Jacob Sullum]
- Drug pricing, estate/inheritance double tax whammy, shaken baby case, mini-OIRA in my new Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]
- And the legal fees flowed like water: dispute with Georgia over water rights has clocked $72 million in legal bills for Florida [Orlando Sentinel]
“Courts Should Stop Approving Unfair Class Action Settlements”
A “claims-made” class action settlement
allows the defendant to make a large amount of money “available” to class members, but in order for the members to collect, they must jump through the hoops of correctly filing claims. Because of the low response rate in such settlements, the defendants will end up paying much less than the funds made available. Indeed, of the $8.5 million made available to the class members [in an action over gym membership fees], Global Fitness only paid $1.6 million — a payout of approximately 10 percent of the settlement funds. Despite this low payout to plaintiffs, class counsel are still paid a certain rate based on the funds that were made available — not the funds that were actually paid out — in some instances giving them attorney fees larger than the class members’ damages award!
The class counsel here were paid $2.4 million, nearly $1 million more than the class members collected.
Josh Blackman, a Cato adjunct scholar and law professor, is a member of the class and raised objections to the settlement. [Ilya Shapiro and Frank Garrison, Cato, on Blackman v. Gascho]
“Lawyers Defend $300 Million Fee In VW Settlement, Say They Didn’t Ride DOJ’s Coattails”
Ted Frank and plaintiffs’ lawyers battle over objections in the class action aftermath of the case of the car too good to be true [Daniel Fisher] Related: Andrew Trask on class action objectors.
Litigation roundup
- Settlement insurance, a new litigation-finance mechanism, can have the unintended result of casting light on just how little benefit some class actions provide to consumers [Ted Frank, CEI] Yet another new litigation finance mechanism: trial-expense insurance purchased by lawyers [Bloomberg/Insurance Journal]
- South Carolina law firm sues 185 different defendants in the average asbestos case it files, and it’s still far from tops in that department [Palmetto Business Daily]
- “Those terms and conditions (that nobody reads) could cost New Jersey retailers” [Tim Darragh, NJ.com on class actions under pre-Internet-era state consumer protection law]
- Some federal courts, while paying lip service to the important Rule 26 discovery reforms that took effect Dec. 1, continue in their old ways, “effectively applying the old standard” [James Beck]
- “Can Pokémon Go and Product Liability Coexist?” [Julie Steinberg, BNA/Product Safety & Liability Reporter, earlier]
- “How does privatization affect liability?” [Sasha Volokh]
Liability roundup
- Big win for Ted Frank’s objector project in Walgreens case: “Posner opinion blasts class actions that are ‘no better than a racket'” [ABA Journal, Kevin LaCroix/D and O Diary, Cook County Record]
- “It’s a bonus if they went [to the hospital] in an ambulance”: litigation funding moves into mainstream [Sara Randazzo, WSJ]
- Class actions and lawyer collusion: why the Supreme Court should review Schulman v. LexisNexis [Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber, Cato]
- “Should Judges Allow Juries To Hear A Windfall May Be Bad For A Plaintiff?” [Kyle White, Abnormal Use]
- California Supreme Court OKs basing class action fees on settlement size rather than hours worked [Alison Frankel, Reuters; earlier on Laffitte v. Robert Half International]
- “Contra Plaintiffs’ Bar, Registering to Do Business Does Not Create General Jurisdiction” [Mark Moller, Washington Legal Foundation]
Daniel Fisher on the VW settlement
The big Volkswagen settlement dishes out a large pot of money for owners of VW diesels, whether they feel injured or not. “A roster of the country’s biggest class-action firms will get an unspecified but huge amount of fees, likely measured in the billions. And buried in the 42-page proposed settlement are tidbits for other folks, including the professional association for state attorneys general and manufacturers of electric cars. … Some AGs justify such payments as reimbursement for their investigative expenses, but as tax-supported officers it is not clear why their professional association should get the money.” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]