My mother has just received a class-action legal form concerning ‘Motive Inc Securities litigation’ in the name of her father’s old partnership. Except her father died over 40 years ago. And both he and she are U.K.-based and this is in the U.S. What comes to mind is that the successor to the partnership has just become a limited company, so the fear is that they may be thinking that she’s a gullible rich old woman. You know, “We’ll need $500 to process your claim…” Or that there may be an identity theft issue.
The documentation is from A.B. Data Ltd of Milwaukee. She is consulting a stockbroker and on his instruction has sent the form to him. But we’re the wrong side of the Atlantic and I’m wondering if any Doper has any experience here. Is this company on the up-and-up? What should we know before approaching A.B. Data?
Is there any information on the form concerning the court in which the litigation is happening? It’d probably be either “United States Court for such-and-such district” (the federal court), or “such-and-such State Court”.
Yes - the United States District Court for the District Court of Texas - which makes me all the more suspicious. Why would a group of Wisconsin lawyers be bringing suit in Texas?
More favorable laws? Many incorporation documents and contracts will explicitly state, “For the purposes of arbitration and other dispute resolution mechanisms, this contract will be construed under the laws of such-and-such state,” or something similar.
Btw, did your mother ever sell her stake in the partnership? The major pitfal of being a member of a partnership is that if you get sued, you get sued. With a limited company, the entity gets sued and you, as an individual, won’t owe anything to anyone.
If your mother hadn’t relinquished her stake (and in turn has enjoyed a divvy of the firm’s tax-free profits), then yeah… she might be screwed. Anyway, why’s your theory that the senders went ‘look, a gullible rich old woman! Let’s scam her.’ The fun reality is they thought, “look, a gullible rich woman, let’s get her money legally!”
IANAL, but is this “class-action legal form” actually some kind of lawsuit or legal threat, or is it just a form to submit a claim as a member of a class? Motive, Inc. has apparently recently settled a class-action claim (yes, in the Western District of Texas) about misrepresentation of projected revenues, which means that owners of Motive stock during the claim period can recover damages. If this is the relevant claim and your partnership were somehow liable, presumably they would have been notified as defendants when the suit was actually filed, apparently in late 2005, and not only now when the settlement is being arranged.
A.B.Data appears to be administering this claim (you might check to see whether the claim form linked at that page looks like what you got), which I guess means they’re the ones notifying possible claimants. Here’s a site about the claim, also apparently run by A.B.Data.
In theory, my mother should have no claim - her father having sold his interest in the partnership. He died in the 1960s. I don’t know what’s going on, so I turned to Dopers.
Omphaloskeptic seems to have the right links, but I don’t see how my mother can be involved. It’s wierd.
I don’t know where claim administrators get their mailing lists, or how accurate or up-to-date they are. I’d guess that to satisfy their notification requirements they send these out to any address they can find with a plausible connection to the suit, even if it is probably out of date. If it is only a claim form, you are free to ignore it; typically all that means is that you won’t get anything from the settlement (if your understanding is correct, you probably wouldn’t anyway) and you can’t sue about it later (likewise, you probably couldn’t anyway).
This seems unlikely to be a scam, though as you say identity theft or “assistance” scams are possible. If I were suspicious about it, I would probably try to contact the court directly and ask for contact information for the settlement offer (to make sure the A.B.Data contact information is correct), and then contact them to ask about it.