After nearly a year and a half without response from the agency, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (and now the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute) is representing individuals taking the Federal Communications Commission to court over the 2016 Charter/Brighthouse/Time Warner cable merger.
The proposed settlement provided class members with worthless injunctive relief, simply codifying labeling changes that Harmless Harvest voluntarily made in 2015, but would have provided $575,000 to attorneys and named plaintiffs. The court agreed with CCAF that the settlement was not fair, reasonable, and adequate.
CCAF attorney Theodore H. Frank won an appellate victory granting him intervention against the filers of strike suits that harm shareholder. Here, plaintiffs convinced Akorn to pay $322,500 in attorneys’ fees, although no benefit has accrued to the class—only immaterial supplemental disclosures.
CCAF objects to settlement in antitrust price-fixing case which includes a nationwide class indirect purchasers of lithium ion batteries in a variety of electronic equipment. Only about 26 states provide a cause of action for such indirect purchasers, however, so recovery to those class members will be diluted by payments to claimants without meritorious claims.
Under the settlement, class members will receive $10 vouchers for use on Art.com's ecommerce sites. The settlement has hallmarks of the coupon-settlement abuse that Congress targeted with the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.
The parties reached a lopsided settlement in which the plaintiffs' attorneys recover $3.9 million while the class gets injunctive relief consisting of 22 words regarding Facebook's practices added to a Facebook help page.
On July 7, 2017, the district court granted final approval of the settlement, even though more than 80 percent of the settlement fund would go to class counsel rather than the class members.
CCAF represented an objector to a settlement over allegedly mislabeled food that proposes to pay class counsel over half the settlement fund, $1.35 million ($2593/hour), while ensuring that the class receives virtually no benefit.
As in the overwhelming majority of strike suits, the settlement in Gordon v. Verizon did not provide any monetary relief to shareholders. Instead, it provided immaterial supplemental disclosures and corporate governance change. Due to CCAF's objection, the court awarded a reduced amount of $1.5 million in fees and expenses.
A double billing error discovered by the Boston Globe and Ted Frank evolves into one of the most in-depth inquiries into securities suit billing. An appointed special master discovered undisclosed payment to attorneys who did no work in case, but plaintiffs' counsel tries to retain their $75 million fee. HLLI successfully argued for a reduced fee and defended the fee award on appeal as an amicus.
