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.
This blog post was previously published on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Open Market Blog. I really only want to talk about one settlement—the settlement in Rougvie v. Ascena Retail Group, No. 15-cv-724 (E.D. Pa.). Ascena is the corporate owner of the Justice brand clothing franchise, which caters to pre-adolescent girls in 900 stores throughout the country. If you’ve ever walked past what you thought was a Care Bears shrine in your…
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.”
Frank told TheDCNF that courts have ways of ensuring “the money gets to the victims,” including “telling the lawyers they don’t get paid if they don’t find” everybody who should be paid. “When the courts hold their feet to the fire, the money gets to the victims,” Frank said.
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.
