# Lawyers get $19 million, clients get rolled! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 24, 2003, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194 "2003-05-24T06:29:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![guava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71e660/32.png) [@guava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guava)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2003, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/21 "2003-05-26T09:38:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fear Itself \* > \*\*If the lawyers kept $19 million, that equals $7.60 per client; not exactly a “rip-off”, if none of these clients were involved in accidents, and their only damages were time and trouble to comply with the recall. \*\* Not exactly a rip-off!?! Excuse me, what did you say? Is that seven dollars and sixty cents? How could that be? I couldn’t find any figures other than the following, which I don’t really understand: > [@](#): > > Today, the first round of notices were sent to all consumers (about 30,000) who requested reimbursement under Bridgestone/Firestone’s Voluntary Safety Tire Recall Reimbursement Program or Customer Satisfaction Program. > \ > In late January, an additional estimated 100,000 notices will be sent to consumers who requested reimbursement and received a partial denial from Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc. > \ > Bridgestone/Firestone has estimated that this restitution program will cost the company $10 million. Let’s assume I’m a (insert prestigious occupation here) that charges $300 an hour for my time. My time to deal with the recall may have been upwards of three hours. So anything less than $900 is a serious insult to me. How many lawyers split the $19 million? Sounds like more than $300 an hour for them. How is this fair? ---
**Author:** ![lucwarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@lucwarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucwarm)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/22 "2003-05-26T18:13:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by guava \* > \*\* > How many lawyers split the $19 million? Sounds like more than $300 an hour for them. How is this fair? \*\* For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t object to a $19 million fee if the class received $100 million in benefits. The problem I have is that the attorneys fee is typically in cash, while the class members receive crappy coupons. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2003, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/23 "2003-05-26T19:21:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lucwarm \* > \*\*For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t object to a $19 million fee if the class received $100 million in benefits. The problem I have is that the attorneys fee is typically in cash, while the class members receive crappy coupons. \*\* Bingo. And that should be outlawed. I don’t mind the lawyers making off with 1/3 of the settlement. If that’s the way it’s got to be in a class action, then that’s fine. But there should be a law that mandates that that 1/3 is, in kind, identical to the 2/3 that the plaintiff class gets. Whatever the cash portion of the total award is, the lawyers get 1/3, and the plaintiffs get 2/3. If a chunk of the award is in rebate coupons, the lawyers get 1/3 of those, too. That should be a legal requirement. Because when the lawyers get millions of dollars, and the members of the plaintiff class get coupons, the plaintiff class generally hasn’t won anything particularly meaningful, but the lawyers have. And when the lawyers profit essentially at the expense of the plaintiff class, it’s stealing in my book. A year or so ago, I was in a plaintiff class on account of having bought a Zip drive back in the late 1990s. We members of the plaintiff class got coupons for 10% off our next purchase of already-obsolete Zip drives. The attorneys for the plaintiff class got several million dollars. Skanky as hell, if you ask me. I didn’t care if I got any money or not. But if we class members didn’t, then the lawyers shouldn’t either. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2003, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/24 "2003-05-26T19:22:44Z")
What’s the motive for a lawyer to represent a class if he can’t get fees for the deal? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2003, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/25 "2003-05-26T19:44:05Z")
**RTF:** _But there should be a law that mandates that that 1/3 is, in kind, identical to the 2/3 that the plaintiff class gets. Whatever the cash portion of the total award is, the lawyers get 1/3, and the plaintiffs get 2/3. If a chunk of the award is in rebate coupons, the lawyers get 1/3 of those, too. That should be a legal requirement._ Not sure I agree. That would just mean that more of the hypothetical award gets diverted into coupons, many of which will never be redeemed and thus cost the defendant nothing. IMHO, lawsuit awards should be **all** cash, to ensure that the defendant actually pays out the awarded sum. The chief value of such awards, ISTM, is in their punitive/deterrent aspect: paying out large sums of money for having screwed the customers is supposed to discourage a company from screwing them the next time. If 2/3 of the award ends up as coupons that 2/3 of the awardees throw away, the culprit has just made the cost of screwing the customers a lot cheaper to pay, thus reducing its disincentive to screw the customers again. So the problem, as I see it, is not that the lawyers get a disproportionate share of the cash; it’s that much of the non-cash portion of the award doesn’t represent real money. If the court says a defendant has to pay a certain sum, by golly, it should actually pay it. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2003, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/26 "2003-05-26T20:07:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by guava \* > **Not exactly a rip-off!?! Excuse me, what did you say?** I said, _NOT EXACTLY A RIPOFF!!!_. Better? > [@](#): > > \*\* Is that seven dollars and sixty cents? How could that be?\*\* As I stated in my post, accordint to the article there were 10 million tires recalled: > [@](#): > > **If we assume that each client bought 4 tires, that’s 2.5 million clients represented in the class action suit. If the lawyers kept $19 million, that equals $7.60 per client** Then you continue: > [@](#): > > **Let’s assume I’m a (insert prestigious occupation here) that charges $300 an hour for my time. My time to deal with the recall may have been upwards of three hours. So anything less than $900 is a serious insult to me.** You must be joking. Even if you bill your clients $300 per hour, to extrapolate that to say all your time spent on personal affairs is worth the same amount is ludicrous and self-aggrandizing. ---
**Author:** ![rexnervous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@rexnervous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rexnervous)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/27 "2003-05-27T00:26:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bricker \* > \*\*What’s the motive for a lawyer to represent a class if he can’t get fees for the deal? \*\* Maybe to get the defendant to settle in something other than coupons for the plaintiffs? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/28 "2003-05-27T01:47:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rexnervous \* > \*\*Maybe to get the defendant to settle in something other than coupons for the plaintiffs? \*\* Sainthood? Lawyers should work for less than they are worth in the open market? Why? ---
**Author:** ![rexnervous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@rexnervous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rexnervous)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/29 "2003-05-27T02:07:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bricker \* > \*\*Sainthood? Lawyers should work for less than they are worth in the open market? Why? \*\* 😕 My point is not that the lawyers shouldn’t get a fee, even an enormous one if that’s what they want. But shouldn’t they have additional motivations to try and get something reasonably similar for **their clients** to what they receive? Receiving $20M in fees, yet getting their clients coupons for future service, seems a little…off. Regardless of the specifics of this one case, it just seems like there is ample opportunity for the lawyers of the plaintiffs and the defendants themselves to work out the best deal they can without regard to the actual plaintiffs. ---
**Author:** ![guava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71e660/32.png) [@guava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guava)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/30 "2003-05-27T14:29:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fear Itself \* > \*\*Even if you bill your clients $300 per hour, to extrapolate that to say all your time spent on personal affairs is worth the same amount is ludicrous and self-aggrandizing. \*\* For a lawyer in this case to say her skills were so outstanding to merit a 19 million dollar payout is ludicrous and self-aggrandizing. My personal time _is_ in fact worth more than $2.53 per hour. If a settlement is reached with a company I’ve had to devote three hours of my time to, I’d expect to be compensated fairly. Obviously, I couldn’t ask for a $900 settlement while my neighbor the grocery-store clerk would receive $33, but somewhere in the middle would be nice. Can anybody estimate the hourly wage the lawyers made on this deal? I’m curious, really, why their arguing skills are _x_ times more relevant than the client’s time and inconvenience when considering the payout ratio. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/31 "2003-05-27T14:37:12Z")
Unfortunately, while you may feel your personal time is worth something, that’s not how things work. If you’re in a car accident, you may not recover the time it took you to shop for a replacement car or to get your damaged car to the body shop. You may receiver the cost of repairing your car, or, if the cost would exceed the vlaue fo your car, you may simply recover the value of your car. If you were injured, you can recover medical bills and even a recompense for the pain you suffered. But you may not recover costs for your time based upon what you earn in the professional world. I’d also point out that you have the option of opting out of any class. If you believe that you are entitled to receive a better settlement than the class attorneys are negotiating for you, you can remove yourself from the class and get your settlement on your own. ---
**Author:** ![ThawingSlowly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@ThawingSlowly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThawingSlowly)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/32 "2003-05-27T15:01:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rexnervous \* > \*\*😕 > > My point is not that the lawyers shouldn’t get a fee, even an enormous one if that’s what they want. But shouldn’t they have additional motivations to try and get something reasonably similar for **their clients** to what they receive? > > Receiving $20M in fees, yet getting their clients coupons for future service, seems a little…off. > > Regardless of the specifics of this one case, it just seems like there is ample opportunity for the lawyers of the plaintiffs and the defendants themselves to work out the best deal they can without regard to the actual plaintiffs. \*\* Well if it makes you feel any better, Senator Bill Ratliff [agrees with you](http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/03/may2.html#0519a). Article in the Dallas News [here](http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/business/stories/050503dnbuslawfees.6aae1.html) (free registration required). Doesn’t say much, mostly examples that show why he feels the law is needed. And this: “The argument that we get when we criticize coupons is that, ‘Oh, well, there’s actually a secondary market for them on the Internet. You can actually trade those coupons. They’re actually a form of legal tender.’ If that’s true, this is no handicap” for attorneys, Mr. Ratliff said." And this: " Another solution would be to link attorney fees to coupon usage, so that if two-thirds of the coupons are used, the attorneys could collect two-thirds of their fees, for example." ---
**Author:** ![ThawingSlowly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@ThawingSlowly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThawingSlowly)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/33 "2003-05-27T15:12:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > And this: > > " Another solution would be to link attorney fees to coupon usage, so that if two-thirds of the coupons are used, the attorneys could collect two-thirds of their fees, for example." \*\* Just to clarify, that wasn’t a Ratliff quote. It could have been a comment from Roger Mandel. (“a Dallas lawyer who handles class-action lawsuits, criticized the proposal as too broad.” but it’s not entirely clear from the article. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/34 "2003-05-27T15:23:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by guava \* > **My personal time _is_ in fact worth more than $2.53 per hour. If a settlement is reached with a company I’ve had to devote three hours of my time to, I’d expect to be compensated fairly. Obviously, I couldn’t ask for a $900 settlement while my neighbor the grocery-store clerk would receive $33, but somewhere in the middle would be nice.** You are missing the point. $7.60 is not the amount class action members are entitled to, it is the portion of the attorney’s fees they are responsible for. In other words, they each paid the attorney’s $7.60 for the coupons for products and services. We don’t know the value of the coupons, but it is safe to say it is more than $7.60, and multiplied by 2.5 million, we are talking about a much larger award to the clients than to the attorneys. The fact that the individual awards are small is due to the dilution by the size of the class action. If you think the clients deserved, say, $500 each, that would translate into a total award of **$1.25 _BILLION_** (2.5 million clients times $500). Do you really think that is going to happen, given that none of the clients suffered any damages? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/35 "2003-05-27T15:30:58Z")
And another thing, if the attorneys took no fee, and simply gave all the 19 million to the clients, how much would each get? **$7.60**. You seem to think that winning a lawsuit is like winning a lottery, and that if the clients don’t get a giant windfall for nothing, they are being “ripped off”. That is just selfish and greedy. ---
**Author:** ![Mojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Mojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/36 "2003-05-27T17:15:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ThawingSlowly \* > \*\*" Another solution would be to link attorney fees to coupon usage, so that if two-thirds of the coupons are used, the attorneys could collect two-thirds of their fees, for example." \*\* As much as I like this idea, I can’t see any of the trial lawyer associations going for it- it would mean that they might not get paid for years down the road. [sub]can I file a class-action lawsuit against trial lawyers?[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![rexnervous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@rexnervous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rexnervous)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/37 "2003-05-27T18:10:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fear Itself \* > \*\*And another thing, if the attorneys took no fee, and simply gave all the 19 million to the clients, how much would each get? **$7.60**. You seem to think that winning a lawsuit is like winning a lottery, and that if the clients don’t get a giant windfall for nothing, they are being “ripped off”. That is just selfish and greedy. \*\* But exactly how greedy were the lawyers who settled this case? Again, I’m not saying they don’t deserve the $19M per se, but the award to the plaintiffs seems ridiculous. And do the lawyers ever start to think “man, if I don’t settle this, I might be out of my fee, so I better settle this now regardless of the settlement?” For example - from what I understand of the case, the plaintiffs were part of a recall. So they have already spent money on tires that were so poorly made (let’s say) that there needed to be this gigantic settlement. Well, they (plaintiffs) spent their money without knowing the dangers of this product. Had they known ahead of time, would they perhaps have changed vendors, say Goodyear or Michelin? So why did the settlement force them to stick with Firestone? Shouldn’t they have received $$ back for the tires, with the option to spend it on whomever they liked? It just seems like the lawyers sure didn’t go far enough in this case. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/38 "2003-05-27T18:12:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bricker \* > \*\*What’s the motive for a lawyer to represent a class if he can’t get fees for the deal? \*\* **Bricker** : in a contingency-fee system, isn’t the incentive for the lawyer to get fees for _winning_ the case? This is a serious question. As I understand it, lawyers in most situations charge an hourly rate. But in certain types of cases, the fee is traditionally a percentage of the winnings. As I understand it, a class action suit is such a type of case. If the lawyer isn’t able to win much of a judgment for the benefit of the plaintiff class, ISTM that that fact should be reflected in his compensation. If plaintiffs got zero, the lawyer would get one-third of zero, which is zero. If they got a billion dollars, the lawyer would presumably get one-third. IMHO, if they get coupons, the lawyer should get one-third of the coupons. If the coupons have little or no cash value, then the lawyer hasn’t won much for his clients. When the lawyer gets cash, while the clients get coupons, it becomes a no-risk situation for the lawyers: there’s no incentive to negotiate a successful settlement for the client class, when the cheapest thing for the defendant to do is simply pay off the opposing lawyer, while giving a faux payment to the class members. Like someone else suggested above, it creates the opportunity for, and appearance of, collusion between defendant and plaintiff’s attorney, at the expense of the plaintiff class. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/39 "2003-05-27T18:40:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kimstu \* > That would just mean that more of the hypothetical award gets diverted into coupons, many of which will never be redeemed and thus cost the defendant nothing. IMHO, lawsuit awards should be **all** cash, to ensure that the defendant actually pays out the awarded sum. My expectation is that if the attorneys had to take their payoff in kind, they would rarely settle for anything other than cash awards. And if they did, it would be some alternative compensation that had value on the open market. I think we agree on the desired end result; where we differ is whether requiring lawyers’ compensation to be identical in kind to plaintiffs’ awards in contingency cases would suffice to make that happen. I think it would, and I also think it would be much more politically palatable. Specifically requiring awards to be in cash would punch a lot of Americans’ ‘overly meddlesome regulation’ button, but requiring attorneys to take a share, in kind, of whatever they won for plaintiffs, would hit the ‘fairness’ button, IMHO. I think it’s the current system that allows defendants to escape the punitive aspect of the system, btw. Giving one attorney an eight-figure payday is much cheaper than paying a few hundred dollars each to a plaintiff class numbering in the millions. And the divergence of plaintiffs’ and attorneys’ interests that you have when the attorneys can win real money while the plaintiffs get coupons, is what allows both the restitutive and the punitive aspects of the system to be short-circuited. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2003, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194/40 "2003-05-27T18:49:57Z")
It’s an inapposite comparison, **FT**. The whole point of a class action lawsuit is the recognition that a single defendant has committed some tortious act against, or breaches a contract with, many similarly-situated would-be plaintiffs, but each individual act’s damages are so small that individual litigation would be cost-prohibitive. In other words, if Firestone sells you a bad tire, and then replaces the bad tire with a good tire, your damages are minimal - certainly not worth suing over; you’d spend mor ein filing fess than you’d collect in damages. But if I can show there are a million similarly situated plaintiffs, each owed $50 in damages, and that each plaintiff would have to prove the same, common questions against the defendant, then the court will allow a class action. So, unlike a traditional contingency fee, in which a lawyer undertakes part of the risk for a share of the reward, the individual share of the reward in a class action is never large – it starts out that way. If an individual class member has significant damages, he should remove himself from the class and litigate separately. The class lawyer does all the work of identifying the potential class, research to show that the common questions predominate, and arguing the certification of the class. He also is responsible for identifying members of the potential class. He does all this because without this, the individuals have no compensation at all. It’s unclear to me how people who are no worse off than they were before can complain. No one forces them to be part of a class- if their settlement is so odious, let them withdraw - or hire their own lawyer and pursue their own remedy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lawyers-get-19-million-clients-get-rolled/177194.md?page=3)