Original Jurisdiction featured Ted Frank, HLLI co-founder and director of litigation, and highlighted our lawsuit, Manhart v. WESPAC Foundation Inc., filed on behalf of drivers who were trapped in their vehicles for hours after anti-Israel activists blocked access to O’Hare International Airport.
Back in 2009, I profiled Ted Frank, dubbing him “The Class Action Avenger.” For more than 15 years, he has made a name for himself as a (frequently successful) challenger of unfair class-action settlements—often ones that provide minimal or no benefits to class members, but hefty fees to the lawyers.
Now, Frank and his colleagues at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute (HLLI)—a nonprofit, public-interest law firm committed to “free markets, free speech, limited government, and separation of powers”—are in the news not for objecting to a class-action settlement, but for litigating a class action of their own. They filed Manhart v. Wespac Foundation, on behalf of a putative class of drivers who got stuck for hours in a massive traffic jam near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The jam was caused by a pro-Palestinian protest, and Frank and HLLI sued various individuals and organizations who were involved in the protest. The lawsuit seeks $36 million in damages for thousands of drivers who were, according to Frank, falsely imprisoned in their cars.
Read more at Original Jurisdiction.