The Adam Liptak article also generously cites my Congressional testimony on cy pres. Earlier: Marek v. Lane; Dry Max Pampers.
The leading critic of abusive class-action settlements is Ted Frank of the Center for Class Action Fairness, and he is one of the lawyers challenging the Facebook settlement. In testimony in March before a House subcommittee, Mr. Frank said Facebook’s payment to the new charity bordered on a sham.
“That is like a settlement against Microsoft settling for Microsoft giving money to the Gates Foundation,” he said, referring to the foundation created by Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda.
David B. Rivkin Jr., the lead lawyer on the new Supreme Court petition, said he hoped the Supreme Court would consider the dangerous incentives created by these kinds of class-action settlements.
“Cy pres awards only increase the risk of collusion,” he said, “because they facilitate settlements that are cheaper and easier for defendants, still provide high fees for class attorneys, but sell class members down the river.”
In addition, when I started doing this in 2009, I joked that there were only a dozen cases worth reading. That number is way up in 2013. We’d like to take some credit, given seven precedential appellate victories under CCAF’s belt, and a number of good district-court and appellate decisions based on our litigation or on precedents we created.