Check you local paper-a Washington law firm has announced a class action lawsuit on behalf of people who bought a Toshiba laptop from 1985 on. Supposedly, there is a pile of cash ($579 million) just waiting to be distributed!
Now, I’m as greedy as the next guy, but how much of these will I ever see? How much will the lawyer’s take be?
I’m off to the yard sales-to buy up all the old Toshibas I can find!!
One of my current duties at my workplace is legal, and I received a settlement form about a month ago, since we’ve purchased quite a few. The short version is: if you can find the qualifying laptops, you might get up to $450 per machine, or as little as $100 gift certificate for more Toshiba products.
The problem is a single bit, incorrectly set in the floppy drive controller, which may permit overflows and corrupted data. As is apparently common in cases like this, Toshiba settled without an admission of fault, creating the fund out of which the settlements are paid. Know how much the two Texas lawyers who successfully pushed the suit are getting?
$150,000,000.
When I get to work, I’ll look over the settlement form for exact qualifications and post them here.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
The terms are:
-
If you purchased your qualifying Toshiba new on or after March 5, 1998: cash rebate between $210 and $443, depending on the date of purchase.
-
For laptops that were under warranty on or after March 5, 1999, the following two options:
a. A software patch purporting to fix the FDC problem and a $225 coupon for the purchase of other Toshiba products, or
b. a new FDC, or a coupon for an external floppy drive, and a $200 coupon for the purchase of Toshiba products.
- For laptops not under warranty as of March 5th, 1999: a software patch and a $100 coupon.
All models of Toshiba laptops are part of the settlement class, except Librettos and models purchased after November 8th, 1999, that have a serial number that end in a “U”.
Hope this helps.
- Rick
Hansel said:
It’s worth pointing out that while they will “get” over $150 million, not all of that is fees.
The settlement agreement, which is not yet approved by a judge, provides for plaintiff’s counsel to receive $147.5 million as fees. This is payable in two equal installments, one at the effective date of the settlement (probably mid-2000) and the second one year from that date.
In addition, they are entitled to hourly fees for any time spent after the effective date of the settlement responding to questions from potential or actual class members.
Finally, they are entitled to be reimbuirsed for actual expenses they incurred in investigating and pressing the suit. Defendant Toshiba cannot object to these expenses as logn as they are less than $3 million. Any expense amount over $3 million must be determined by the judge.
By way of contrast, the named plaintiffs (Ethan Shaw and Clive D. Moon) each receive $25,000.
Toshiba continues to deny any wrongdoing, and avers it is unaware of anyone that ever lost any data as a result of the floppy disk controller’s allegedly poor design.
- Rick
Oh nuts, I shouldn’t have sold that really old Toshib laptop for $60.00…
This is just another f*cked up deal with some smart-ass lawyer making a quick buck, or a quick 150 million bucks. What do they do to earn all that? Nothing.
There is a woman suing Disney for millions because a haunted house gave her emotional distress. Another bullshit story which I’m sure will soon have the lawyers getting millions while the woman gets free Disney videos or something.
Hang all the lawyers, Shakespear was right!
You’re right, the lawyers did nothing, other than investigate the validity of the claim, commence the lawsuit, draft the class certification papers and argue the motion, draft all the other paperwork to make sure all the people entitled to get something receive notice, respond to inquiries from putative class members, draft discovery requests and review the documents produced by Toshiba (if any), respond to any discovery requests made by Toshiba (if any), conduct depositions (possibly), appear in court and argue on behalf of the class that the settlement is fair, just and reasonable, oversee the mailing of settlement notices to the thousands and thousands of people who are part of the class, process the responses, and, ultimately, make sure that everyone entitled to receive a check gets one. You’re right, I’m sure all of that activity could be done in just a couple of hours and those lawyers are greedy bastards for expecting to get paid for that piddly amount of work. So long as the class members are adequately compensated, I don’t have a problem with Toshiba paying the lawyers millions.
The VALIDITY OF THE CLAIM! There’s the rub! Most computer magazines rate the TOshibas very highly! One would think that if there was a problem, then Toshiba would probably deal with their customers. Once again, under the tort system, lawyers make huge amounts, while the actual wronged parties get almost nothing!
If there’s nothing wrong with the computers, then anything that anyone gets is a bonus–does it matter how much if you haven’t been damaged in any way, shape or form? I know absolutely nothing about this lawsuit, so I don’t know if Toshiba simply decided to pay out rather than litigate a suit that is baseless or whether they felt this was a good deal. In any event, 150 million for the lawyers seems exorbitant. I was simply trying to point out that it is the lawyers who do all the work whenever a plaintiff recovers anything and that there is more involved than simply filing a complaint.
In support of their fee, plaintiffs counsel claim the following work (para. 1.4 of the Proposed Class Settlement):
Moreover, while I am no expert on Texas, ethical rules in all states prohibit lawyers from charging exorbitant fees. Admittedly, this measure is made by comparing other lawyers’ fees to the one under consideration, so it is not a defense to the charge that all lawyers charge exorbitant fees, but it does go to the inference that this settlement is exorbitant.
As to the haunted house lawsuit:
Reviewing http://cnn.com/2000/US/01/05/haunted.lawsuit.ap/ will reveal that the amount sought is $15,000 rather than the millions suggested by AvenueBdude. For what it’s worth, the defendant is Universal Studios, not Disney. I do think that if you visited a “hanuted house” you are assumign some risk of being scared, but beyond that, I have no comment.
Returning to the criticism of the tort system, class action lawsuits exist in order to provide an equitable way of resolving disputes in which the harm done to each defendant is so small that, alone, it would not be worth litigating. If a huge bank intentionally steals fractions of a cent every day from their customer’s bank balances, an individual at the end of the year may be out two or three dollars. For him to hire a lawyer to prove that wrongdoing makes no sense.
But if he can sue the bank on behalf not only of himself, but all others similarly situated, the prospect of a recovery begins to look better, and hiring a lawyer begins to make sense.
Let’s not lose sight of this fact, though: in the end, the named plaintiff has still only lost the two or three dollars. Any compensatory recovery he makes beyond that is gravy.
And as noted above, the lawyers do do an awful lot of work on behalf of their clients. Not listed in the quoted paragraph is the time spent developing and arguing that common questions predominate, and that a class certification in appropriate in the first place, since a proposed class of plaintiffs must be certified before a class action can commence.
- Rick
And let’s not forget that for every case that a class action lawyer wins, he’s spent time on others that he either: a) lost; b) declined to take after investigating the facts;or c) won, but recovered only a small fee.
Cases of this kind also require retaining very expensive expert witnesses and consultants, all of whom must be paid up front.
This also applies to contingency cases. While I don’t do personal injury or medical malpractice work, one of my partners does, and I am generally familiar with the practices of other firms. Because preparing these kind of cases is so expensive, good firms don’t even consider taking a med mal case unless the damages are about $200,000. Said another way, you can have the worst medical screwup in the world, with real (but not huge) damages, and lawyers will decline your case, as it will cost too much to bring.
Why do you have to pay experts in advance if there never going to testify?
This is why everyone hates lawyers, they have no desire for the truth, just what they can prove, by paying experts to say whatever they need to have said. If the doctor hires you, then he’s done nothing wrong. If the malpractice victim hires you, then the doctor’s a quack. You don’t care whose right, just who pays you.
And dont EVEN get me started on OJ.
Everybody is still missing the point! HThe possibility of somebody, anybody getting $150 million is obscene! At $500/hour, that’s 300,000 hours of “work” and nobody, but nobody is worth that.
Furthermore, it is a gross distortion of the economic system, because ultimately, Toshiba won’t pay a cent-their future customers will!
What is the maximum value that someone’s work is worth, egkelly?
He is 100 percent correct!
No person can do anything that should be worth $500 an hour when people are starving in the world. The fact that lawyers can earn that and far more goes to show how warped we as a society are.
And yes I know that Micheal Jordan and Elle Macpherson and hundreds of others also earn that and more. Big deal. Same logic applies, it just isn’t right.
Someones numbers are off:
"0 November, 1999
PC makers await suits in Toshiba
defects case
By Rebecca Munro & Rebecca Sykes
BOSTON - Toshiba's decision to
settle the lawsuit charging it with
selling defective laptop computers has
reportedly propelled the plaintiffs to
file similar suits against other PC
makers.
The Texas plaintiffs' lawyers filed
separate suits against Compaq,
Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Packard Bell
NEC, and eMachines, according to a
story in last Tuesday's Wall Street
Journal.
Toshiba recently announced a $US1
billion settlement fund related to a
lawsuit filed in Texas under the names
of Thurmond and Lapray, who
charged the computer maker with
selling laptops with flawed floppy
disk controllers. A report on last
week's Dow Jones newswire valued
Toshiba's settlement at $US2.1 billion
and said that more than five million
Toshiba laptops will be affected.
Observers were not surprised that
Toshiba's decision to settle was
followed by additional suits."
From: http://www2.idg.com.au/arndb.nsf/current/797FD70AFE9F7B364A256825000760CC
Does anyone know the nature of the defect, and was any real harm done?
AvenueB states:
Because they won’t review your claim and help you prepare your case if they don’t get paid.
You seem to think that a plaintiff’s attorney files a case, and it immediately proceeds to settlement or trial. Except on TV, it doesn’t work that way. In any case of any size or complexity, there are hundreds or thousands of hours spent preparing it, doing and responding to discovery, defending motions brought by the defense, and consulting with experts. I guarantee that the attorneys for the class spent a lot on computer experts who reviewed this claim and assisted in the discovery process. They get paid, and so did the experts hired by that same lawyer on the 20 other cases he handled last year where he lost or didn’t get the kind of recovery that we’re talking about here.
ok, so I have a Toshiba laptop that I bought in 98… where to I go to get my money?
–
Teeming Millions: http://fathom.org/teemingmillions
“Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
Reminds me of the line from Mario Puzo’s classic “THE GODFATHER”, when Tom Hagen (the Don’s adopted, non-italian son, is sad that he cannot become a “made” member of the Mob.
Seeking to comfort him, the old Don tells him…" you are a lawyer-a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than ten men with guns…"