“The settlement was unfair because the attorneys' fees award was grossly disproportionate to the relief actually delivered to the class, Holyoak said. "Before the Center for Class Action Fairness objected, the plaintiffs’ attorneys were to receive $2.11 million, while the class members would have received $412,815 in coupons.”
“The judge is anticipating a real investigatory role for the special master. There’s $2 million in the pot – there’s no incentive to do a brief, perfunctory investigation.”
“This is very serious,” said Frank, a leading national critic of legal fees in class-action lawsuits. “The judge is anticipating a real investigatory role for the special master.”
“Over 99 percent of the Target data breach class gets nothing in this multi-million-dollar settlement, so we are glad that the Eighth Circuit recognizes that the district court cannot rubber-stamp settlements where class counsel cuts corners on procedural fairness so they can get paid quickly and generously,” said Melissa Holyoak, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Class Action Fairness.
The National Law Review reports on the Center for Class Action Fairness's objection to a Google class action settlement. Class members claim Google used computer code to circumvent privacy settings, allowing advertisers and third parties to track their cookies and browsing activities. In settlement, Google offered to pay $5.5 million to a handful of internet technology and privacy rights institutions for internet privacy research. Class counsel agreed. With all advocates on…
The center argues in its filing that class members “will see not one penny.” “This settlement exemplifies the problem of class action attorneys behaving as if they have no clients other than the general public,” Adam Schulman said in a statement. “It is unacceptable to propose a settlement that waives class members’ rights yet provides them absolutely nothing in return.”
“This happens all the time,” said Frank. “Lawyers pad their bills with overstated hourly work to make their fee request seem less of a windfall.”
The Boston Globe discusses Thornton Law Firm's legal fees in class-action lawsuits with the Center for Class Action Fairness's founder Ted Frank. Critics of the way lawyers are paid in class-action lawsuits acknowledge that firms often dramatically mark up the rates of their lower-paid attorneys when seeking legal fees in court, but they say Thornton has pushed the practice to an extreme. “This happens all the time,” said Ted Frank, a lawyer…
“[T]he cacophony created by shoddy objections brought by bad-faith objectors,” the lawsuit states,” interferes with a court’s ability to fairly consider the reasoned good-faith objections brought by the Center.”
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.
