On Monday evening, CCAF filed its opening appeal brief in a class action where the plaintiffs claim Filippo Berio olive oil was falsely marketed as “Imported from Italy,” when the olives used actually came from other countries.
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.
F. Paul Bland asserts (Letters, Sept. 12) that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule is necessary to avoid “immunity” for Wells Fargo for creating fake accounts. Like most antiarbitration rhetoric, this is fiction. The CFPB’s antiarbitration rule isn’t even in effect, yet government authorities (not class-action lawyers) required Wells Fargo to provide full restitution for consumers, fined the bank an additional $185 million in addition to Wells Fargo losing substantial market share from…
“I’m confident that one day this decade a different court of appeals will disagree with one of those Posner opinions, the Supreme Court will take up the circuit split, and then tell us that Posner was right all along,” Frank said.
Do Americans need more lawsuits? They’ll get them if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has its way. The CFPB—created by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 and still run by an Obama appointee—issued a rule in July barring financial institutions from including arbitration clauses in their contracts with customers. That means disputes would have to be settled by class-action lawsuits, which mostly benefit lawyers. The agency justifies its rule by claiming it…
"It was wonderful to see the principle vindicated," that cases without benefits to absent class members should not be certified.
The Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) today filed a reply brief in In re Google Inc. Cookie Placement Consumer Privacy Litigation arguing that the cy pres distribution in the proposed settlement is unfair to the class when direct compensation through a claims process is feasible.
Theodore Frank, an activist who founded the Class Action Fairness Center, objected to the deal on several grounds, including that some of them had prior relationships with Google as well as the lawyers representing the consumers.
"We had hoped the court would recognize that this settlement exemplifies the worst of lawyer-driven class actions and should not be approved under existing law,” said CCAF director Ted Frank about the decision. “The class relief is entirely illusory and yet the attorneys claim they are entitled to millions of dollars in fees."
The settlement in this antitrust price-fixing case unlawfully reduces the recovery of those 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 because those with legitimate claims receive less relief than they deserve while class members with no legal claim stand to receive an undeserved windfall.
