Today the Supreme Court granted cert in Frank v. Gaos, a challenge to the class action settlement negotiated by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in Gaos v. Google which provided $0 to class members and $8.5 million to be divided between the plaintiffs’ lawyers – who received $1000/hour on this case – and third-party charities unrelated to the case.
Critics of these settlements described them as a form of suspect collusion between plaintiffs' lawyers and corporate defendants, since both benefit by arranging a settlement. Leading the challenge to these deals is Ted Frank, a Washington lawyer who regularly objects to class-action settlements.
But Theodore Frank and Melissa Ann Holyoak objected to what is called a “cy pres” agreement and said Monday they were gratified the court had taken the case. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court’s review will result in a standard forbidding attorneys from misusing class-action settlements to selfishly put themselves and third parties ahead of their clients,” said Frank
In objecting to the Google settlement, they said research centers based at Harvard and Stanford universities, among those slated for awards, had connections to both sides in the case: Google already supported the centers, and some plaintiffs’ attorneys had attended the schools.
The deal’s opponents were led by Ted Frank, director of litigation for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative think tank. They said the deal violated procedural rules in U.S. law requiring settlements to be fair, reasonable and adequate.
“I do believe that the Department of Justice’s involvement and the interest from state attorneys general was helpful in getting the judge’s attention and making sure that this settlement received the scrutiny it deserved,” Schulman said.
The Center for Class Action Fairness objected on behalf of a class member in Farrell v. Bank of America, a class action in which plaintiffs’ counsel sought attorneys' fees that would compensate them at rates of over $7700 per hour of time they spent working on the case.
Bloomberg Law discusses our ninth-circuit appeal in the lithium ion antitrust litigation: A possible vehicle for federal courts to revisit the inconsistent treatment comes in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by a class action advocacy group. The Center for Class Action Fairness is seeking to undo an October 2017 settlement in In Re: Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litigation, a multi-district lawsuit on a price-fixing…
CCAF opposed a settlement in Ma v. Harmless Harvest, a class action dispute over claims of organic products in coconut water in which class attorneys sought $575,000 and the class members get nothing.
The Center for Class Action Fairness filed its opening brief in an appeal of the settlement in In re Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litigation today, arguing that the Ninth Circuit should decertify the class and reverse the settlement approval. The settlement in this antitrust price-fixing case unlawfully reduces the recovery of class members who have stronger claims than others. In this type of settlement, relief distributed pro rata to a nationwide class is a false justice…
