He doesn’t actually have it in hand yet but it’s his share of sandpiper.
Oh, OK, thanks.
One question: do the law firms continue to get paid for time they are putting in on the class action case? Can they bill it against future payments, or something? If so, they obviously have a HUGE incentive to keep the case going for as long as possible.
This was such a great episode, particularly for Kim.
His share of the Sandpiper settlement if it happens now is around $1.16 million and he thinks he convinced Irene to convince the firms to settle. He hasn’t actually gotten the money yet, but he thinks it’s a sure thing. Which on this show means there’s probably going to be a snag in the finale.
AFAIK, except in special cases the law firm pursuing (HHM and D&M here) a class action gets a fixed percentage of the settlement if they win, they can’t keep racking up hours and increase the percentage, so there’s no reason to artificially inflate their hours. Their incentive to hold out is that the defending company (Sandpiper) knows that they might have to pay out a lot more in a court settlement and have to keep paying their lawyers as the case goes on, plus even more if it goes into court, so will want to end the case without going that far. They hold out not to rack up hours to bill, but because the closer it gets to trial the more Sandpiper will offer to close things up, which means more money for them.
Also, Chuck’s estimate back in S1 that this case might settle for $20 million seems to be accurate even though Sandpiper scoffed at it back then, since they’re already offering $17 milllion.
Could somebody please point out where we established that it was ibuprofen in the fake angina pills rather than the ‘extra’ brick of meth/ cocaine? I must have missed it.
There is a montage in episode 8 of Nacho mashing up plain white pills. On the table in front of him are a couple of ibuprofen bottles filled with plain white pills.
Hector knows all about the extra brick, so there shouldn’t be anything mysterious there.
Thanks! I did not notice that.
I thought the chain consisted of just a few restaurants. That laundry is high-volume enough to handle the laundry from hundreds of restaurants, it looked like to me.
Cosigned.
I had the same thought.
Yes. I really appreciated that it was not telegraphed the way it would be in a network show. But for several seconds before the crash I was steeling myself for exactly that thing to happen. I have experienced “microsleep” while driving myself, and it is very scary. (The scariest part is you can tell yourself that you are OK as long as you will your eyes to stay open, but if you are sleep deprived enough, you can fall asleep with your eyes still open.) I have been very lucky not to crash as a result, but I have a friend who was not so lucky and messed up his knee and wrist permanently.
Thank god for rumble strips. They’ve saved me more than once.
My money’s on Irene dying (essentially of a broken heart) before she can sign the relevant papers. Jimmy, architect of his own misfortune once again.
Also for my money, there was nothing remotely ethical about what he did with Irene. He was motivated solely by his own greed, as Howard saw. Jimmy got the Sandpiper case rolling in the first place because he won Irene’s trust that he would faithfully represent her, but when the time came he ripped her heart out so he could get paid. We shouldn’t underestimate just how cruel and painful ostracism can be. Irene’s community is all she has. She can’t leave. She doesn’t have other friends to go and see. Practically everyone she will talk to for the rest of her life is at Sandpiper. Whether Sandpiper feels like a home or a prison is entirely down to how welcome she feels in that community. Without friends - in fact, surrounded by people who clearly despise her - she’s facing a future of lonely misery and an unmourned death. And for no reason at all that she can see. Jimmy put her through psychological torture because he’d rather get a big payout now by screwing people over than be halfway decent and wait for an even bigger payout. His problems are all that matter; other people are there to be used.
Fuck that guy.
Good points. However, many of them could also die before they ever see a payout, including Irene.
Yeah, I don’t blame Jimmy too much. H&M is the one dragging the litigation out so long that all the payees croak off before they can get and enjoy their money. I see Jimmy’s solution as “win-win” for him and the geezers.
Slippin Jimmy is first and foremost, a conman. Except for a few close partners and maybe some family members, everyone else is considered a possible mark/target/chump. Now Slippin Jimmy has become a conman who is also a lawyer. Actual empathy for others is not on his menu. Pretending to be empathetic is a necessary skillset for successful conmen.
Jimmy desperately needs money. His other efforts haven’t proven to be very successful. The Sandpiper settlement will put him back on easy street, but how can he manipulate situation to his benefit?
Slippin Jimmy chose to help old people because that’s were he could make money, not because he likes old people. It’s business, not personal. Just as a wolf will separate the weak and old from the herd before they move in for the kill, Jimmy has chosen to isolate Irene from her herd (aka her friends) leaving Slippin Jimmy as her only trusted confidant. Irene’s instruction overrides Hamlin’s concerns and BINGO, Jimmy hits paydirt.
That may have been true in the Slippin’ Jimmy days (back before the sunroof incident and his attempt to reform), but I really don’t think it’s fair to Jimmy McGill (the Jimmy we’ve seen in the main part of the show). He’s been in a great position to take advantage of his elderly clients while running his law practice, and the thought doesn’t even seem to have crossed his mind that he could rip them off easily since they trust him so much. When he found out about Sandpiper, I didn’t read his reaction as just “I can make money here,” it really seemed to me like he was morally offended at relatively helpless people getting ripped off by a big company. (And it contrasted with Chuck, who saw the case as interesting but didn’t seem to notice people were involved).
Also, while we don’t see that much of Slippin’ Jimmy, I really don’t have the impression that he considered everyone else a ‘possible mark’ for anything big. Yeah, he’d do bar bets on just about anyone, but those are really more playful than a real con. His big scams seemed to be targeted on people who were already scummy, like someone who would steal a passed out guy’s watch. We didn’t see any of his slip and falls, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that he picked ‘asshole’ business owners like the guitar shop guys and faceless big companies as his marks, and not the ‘too-nice, honest guy trying to make a buck running a store’ that would remind him of his dad. I doubt they’ll ever give a really definite answer on this, much like we never saw what really happened with Grey Matter in BB.
I think that Jimmy was really trying hard to go basically straight, with some occasional ‘moral ends justify unethical means’ things like the bus ‘breakdown’ to get to clients Sandpiper was keeping him from. And that he had a definite moral framework even if it was a bit sketchy and self-serving. Which makes his latest actions a bigger jump in my book; he’s not just reverting to old slippin’ Jimmy, he’s ditching his moral compass entirely and looking out for #1. I mean, I could watch several episodes of Slippin’ Jimmy pulling off cons and laugh through it, but watching him hurt nice little old ladies for cash is just brutal.
I see what you did there 
I think the ethical issue is less significant than the moral issue, with ethics focusing on ‘did he break the law or formal code of conduct’ and moral more like 'did he do something that did unjustified harm". Ethically, he’s probably not supposed to be trying to influence the class representative without coordinating with the other lawyers on his side, and really shouldn’t be doing so now since he isn’t allowed to act as a lawyer. He’s covering his tracks to the point that it’s not provable, and we’ve already seen many times that Jimmy doesn’t care about ethical violations as long as he doesn’t get in trouble for them, so that isn’t a big character change - I certainly have zero surprise when I see Jimmy engage in unethical shenanigans, and they’re usually fun to watch.
What is significant to me is that his moral position is very, very different than what he’s done before. He’s had no problem with ‘the moral end justifies the unethical means’ before, but this is the first time he’s going into ‘the monetary end justifies the immoral means’ territory. Destroying Irene’s life to convince her to do what is in Jimmy’s best interest is IMO a significant change from what we’ve seen from him before. I think this is the the big first step of moving from the guy who would rip off someone who was trying to steal a watch to the guy who finds it absurd that Walt doesn’t straight up murder Badger.
I don’t think that lets him off the hook - that defense relies on him being the authority who gets to decide what’s in the class’s best interest, and takes away their right to decide how to weight money now vs money in the future. If Jimmy was making the argument to them that they’re better off taking the money now than holding out a year or two for another thousand, and managed to convince them, it would be one thing. But he has made the decision for them without consulting them, and is using the decision he made for his own benefit to justify his nasty treatment of Irene. Yeah, I’m sure he’s saying in his own head that it’s for their benefit, but I believe that about as much as Howard does.
I’m not knowledgeable about restaurant finances but my impression is that the margins are rather slim.
I would think that it would take a large chain of restaurants to generate the cash flow to believably launder the profits from the volume of meth that Walt was producing for him.
Keep in mind that Walt’s income from working for Gus was more than he could launder with a few car washes, and that had to be only a fraction of what Gus was making.
Unless it’s the laundry Gus is using to launder the money in which case, what is the purpose of the chicken restaurants, and does an industrial laundry by itself generate the needed cash flow?
I’m a little unclear on Los Pollos Hermanos. In Breaking Bad, it’s implied that it’s a fairly widespread restaurant chain. In BCS, it certainly seems like, at this point in time (several years before BB), Los Pollos Hermanos only has one location. And that certainly isn’t enough to support a large laundry service.
Also, there are no indications that Gus owns his own chicken farm yet, either. I think Gus has a lot of growing to do before he is in the position he held in Breaking Bad. Right now he’s low man on the totem pole to Hector Salamanca (though he’s working on that), and not nearly as well-regarded in the Albuquerque business community nor among the police department as we know he will be.
As we’ve seen this season, Los Pollos Hermanos is at least as important for distributing the drugs as it is for laundering money.
Which implies a fleet of trucks. Which I would think implies more than a few restaurants. And if Gus is distributing drugs, then he’s being paid to do so and has to launder that money.