Bricker:
Nitpick: not any class. Not, say, a 23(b)(1)(b) mandatory class where a limited fund exists.
Otherwise, I’m in complete agreement with your posts. Well-said.
I should probably also say, for the benefit of people not named Bricker, that the 23(b)(1)(b) class seems to have very restricted applicability when trying to aggregate mass torts, at least per Ortiz v. Fibreboard, 527 U.S. 815 (1999). But it can still happen.
Actually, Gadarene, your information was very helpful to people named Bricker as well – my background was in criminal law, and the last time I had to know class action details was the bar exam!
I also note that for some reason, I called RTFirefly “FT” above. Who knows where my mind was…
I agree.
Yes.
But even if the award for each individual is small, it’s the total award that we’re talking about, here. So I don’t see the difference. One-third of on-million $50 awards is the same as one-third of a single $50M award. How does this change the risk/reward structure for the lawyers?
Yup. But again, how does this differ, in the risk/reward side of things, from any other contingency case? Whether it’s a class action or not, the lawyer knows he’s going to put in a bunch of hours, and only be paid if he wins. His payday may seem outsize when he wins, but that makes up for some of the cases he took on, but lost at. I have no trouble with that, either.
You’ve already refuted this last point: we’re talking awards that are too small for one class member to have any incentive to pursue alone.
But you seem to be oblivious to my main point: in a normal contingency case, the lawyer’s interest is aligned with that of the plaintiff. But in one of these coupon class-actions, they diverge. If the lawyer gets one-third of a single-plaintiff contingency settlement, that means one-third. The better the lawyer does for the client, the better the lawyer does.
But in a class action, the lawyer can do well despite doing poorly for the clients. Sure, they’re no worse off, but they’re no better off either, when they’re part of one of these coupon settlements.
(Actually, they probably are worse off in a sense - sure, you can opt out of the class, and try to find an honest lawyer to bring a class action for you and others who’ve opted out, or who weren’t identified to begin with, but that’s going to be a much smaller class than at first. So who’s going to take your case now?)
But the lawyer has won a nice payday on the legal fiction that he’s helped make you whole, even though he hasn’t done a damned thing for you. How you can defend that, I’m not sure I can see. You’re saying that it’s perfectly reasonable for the plaintiff class to simply represent an opportunity for the lawyers to make themselves some bucks, while not accomplishing diddly for the plaintiffs.
Many people regard lawyers as leeches and parasites. I’m not one of them. But here, dammit, that’s exactly what they are. They are being rewarded for merely the pretense of winning a settlement for their clients. It’s not that they haven’t added to the wealth of the society, but they haven’t even moved any of that wealth from the hands of those who had it but shouldn’t have, to the hands of those who were done out of it. But they’ve been paid as if they had.
RTFirefly: A man of all seasons. A man who ends Diogenes’ search.
No matter what you say or do, you are my hero forever.
Unless of course, you slip. - 
I think what bothers me about it that it seems to me that the lawyer is not acting in the clients’ best interests. For example- my monitor’s screen size wasn’t as large as advertised- how does a $13 coupon towards a new monitor help remedy that? I understand that I don’t have to accept it, and I probably won’t be able to prove significant damages, but it makes me feel that the attorney who filed the class action suit wasn’t doing so on my behalf. For having someone claiming to act in my interests, “not being worse off” is a pretty low standard.
It seems to me that you’re presenting a bit of a false dichotomy here. I agree that if the choice were purely between class actions as we have them now, and no class actions at all, we’d be probably better off with class actions.
However, I believe that there is another alternative: Class actions where class members get juicier settlements than they do now.
**
This is not a realistic alternative for the exact reason we have class actions in the first place – it’s just not worth the trouble.
Dunno about your mind - I just assumed your left index finger was one row down from where you’d meant it to be. No biggie.
Milum - don’t worry, I’ll slip. Happens all the time. But thanks.
I worked for a credit card lender who accidentally charged card members a $36 late fee. We settled class action lawsuits in various locations. End result, card member $0.36 per claim, attorneys $35.64 per claim. Best yet, most of the people receiving the 36 cent checks had no idea what they were for.:smack:
In my eyes, this is a case of a settlement too small. The credit card lender should be forced to pay out an amount large enough for each member to get at leasthis $36 back, and to cover the lawyers charges. Yes, even if it is eighteen trillion dollars. I’m sure there were opportunities to settle fairly out of court for a much smaller sum.
No I don’t think it’s going to happen. But I think that’s what should happen. Settlement should be related to real damages suffered, not some random amount that will pay for the lawyer’s new summer home. Dreamland, I know, but I can hope. And you’re ignoring the fact that yes, the plaintiff did suffer damages, of time and money, in my eyes anyway.
Yes, sounds right to me, but then when each plaintiff does NOT receive his $50 in damages, he has a right to be annoyed. Opt out? Not likely
Nobody has answered yet. Who decides how much the lawyers get as compared to the plaintiffs? If I was expecting a $50 settlement and got $25, does the lawyer somehow now get half of what she was expecting?
Good grief.
What do you think happens to your settlement in a straight contingency case? Let’s say that you, the victim of a negligent driver, were injured. At trial, a jury finds your injuries and damages amount to $9,000. That’s the amount of money that fairly and accurately represents your damages.
Are you pissed at your lawyer when you receive a total of less than $6,000? After all, you were hit with $9,000 of damage, and you’re only getting $6,000 - right?
Yeah, I’d be annoyed. But let’s suppose the case was settled as follows: My lawyer gets a fee of $5000 and I get a coupon for $10,000 off the next time that same driver runs into me and I need to get my car repaired. In that case, I’d be outraged.
As well you should be. But in the case of the OP, the clients had no significant damages. Expecting a big cash windfall is just opportunism.
My point is this: when the lawyer accepts some of the financial risk in your case by working on contingency, he will collect some of the money that “rightfully” is awarded to you to compensate for your damages. That’s the way contingency works, and it produces relatively little outrage.
Now compare that principle to the one we’re seeing in class actions. We’ve already agreed that the only reason you’re in the class in the first place is because your damages were so small that individual litigation was cost-prohibitive. Under what theory do you expect to receive anything approaching your actual damages?
My concern is that it seems as though firms are now sniffing around for things that might make a case, and then alerting people to the fact that they’ve been ripped off. That is, that the young go-getters of Winkin, Blinkin, and Nodd notice that Scope is quite as minty fresh as the ads might have one believe. So Winkin, Blinkin, and Nodd contact as many Scope customers as they can find and ask them to join the suit. By sending out letters explaining to people, most of whom were probably happy enough with the minty freshness of Scope, that certain studies from the Minty institute and a number of papers published by the Freshness Consortium show that a level of minty freshness 1.25-percent higher than the minty freshness of Scope is possible, yet those evil Scope people failed to provide all that minty freshness - despite widespread TV and print advertisements clearly promising a high level of minty freshness!
It seems this way because for the few years I’ve seen more and more news stories on the topic (along with real-live experience with CALs). However, I’ve never seen any proof that class action lawsuits are more common now than they were 15 years ago, and it would certainly be difficult to prove that lawyers were sniffing around for anything.
I’m hoping this doesn’t become an octuple post:
Screw receiving compensation equal to actual damages, Bricker, how about just receiving REAL compensation? A coupon for $10 off the next purchase of a lousy product, or for a service you don’t want isn’t compensation at all. If my compensation is only $10, then give me a check for $10, I’ll buy a pizza with it.
A coupon for $10 isn’t equal to a check for $10, therefore the lawyer’s compensation should not be based on $10.
In response to my heated denial that lawyers engage in collusionary price-fixing:
It is now 5-28-2003.
Well, Milum? Are you researching in a different language? Are you on a 300 baud dial-up connection?
Or are you merely going to slink off into the distance without either a retraction or a citation?
Who says it is?
Does a coupon for $10 have any cash value at all?
Cash Value : 1/20 Cent
Enjoy,
Steven