Frank took issue with these terms, so he bought a pack of "Ultra" batteries from Amazon.com to become a class member. "This is really a settlement structured to benefit the attorneys and nobody else," he said.
BakerHostetler cites the Center for Class Action Fairness's case in their 2015 Class Action Fairness Year-End Review.
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 –…
Ted Frank speaks to the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group Podcast regarding his cert petition with the Supreme Court in Frank v. Poertner.
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.
Today, the Center for Class Action Fairness petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging an abusive class action practice where trial lawyers pay themselves the bulk of the cash recovery ($5.7 million), the class members receive just a fraction of that ($344,000), and the settlement hands out millions to third parties who are not part of the class.
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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