The Center for Class Action Fairness won a victory for consumers when a court in the Northern District of California entered an order this week agreeing with CCAF’s position that more than $2.35 million in uncashed checks in the Online DVD Rental Antitrust Litigation settlement should go to consumers rather than to third-party charities unrelated to the litigation.
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Class Action Fairness won its challenge to a class action settlement deal related to the merger between Walgreens and Boots pharmacies.
Late last week the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that the $14 million fee request by attorneys in a coupon settlement over Justice clothing store sales was excessive under federal law and that only $5.3 million could be currently justified.
“A class member deserves more than a potentially useless date voucher from It’s Just Lunch, which is why we object to the current settlement which awards millions to the attorneys who decided to take up the case and leaves the nationwide class members with nothing,” said CCAF attorney Anna St. John. “Quite simply, the settlement is unfair and the court should reject it.”
The court order means that consumers will receive $9 million more than they would have under class counsel’s original request.
Today, the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) filed a reply brief in the Gaos v. Google settlement appeal to the Ninth Circuit. In the original case plaintiffs’ lawyers sued Google for statutory damages for alleged federal privacy violations by their search engine. The settlement established an $8.5 million fund, none of which went to the class members affected by the privacy violations. Instead, the settlement fees were split between the plaintiffs’ lawyers –…
The Center for Class Action Fairness recommends the court select lead plaintiffs’ counsel through a competitive bidding process among the dozens of attorneys expected to apply.
Today, the CCAF filed a cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court asking for review of a class action lawsuit settlement in Poertner v. The Gillette Co. The original case centered on a lawsuit over dubious advertising claims made about Duracell batteries. Class counsel structured a settlement that paid themselves $5.7 million, paid a small fraction of class members a total of $344,850, and left over 99 percent of the class with nothing.
CCAF attorney Anna St. John said, “If awarded in full, the excessive fee requested by class counsel would transfer to plaintiffs’ attorneys tens of millions of dollars that rightfully belong to class members. It’s an all-too-common example of attorneys purporting to represent consumers harmed by unlawful business practices, when in reality these attorneys try to harm those same consumers again by seeking far more than they are entitled to by law.”
CCAF is concerned the Judicial Panel will not consider judicial track records in scrutinizing the fairness of settlements when deciding who to transfer the case to.
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