Reuters’ Alison Frankel analyzes CCAF’s objection to the Equifax settlement:
I’m more interested, though, in CCAF’s substantive arguments for why the Equifax settlement should not be approved. Broadly speaking, those contentions fall into three buckets: The settlement does not account for conflicts between class members from states that offer relatively big statutory damages for privacy breaches and those with small or no potential damages; Equifax and class counsel included terms in the settlement that made it very difficult for class members to object; and Equifax and class counsel throttled class members’ claims for $125 in cash when it became clear that the offer would be drastically oversubscribed.
The most promising of those arguments seems to me to be CCAF’s assertion that Equifax and class counsel failed to acknowledge and address potential conflicts among class members. The brief uses Frank and Watkins, the named objectors, to illustrate that point. In Watkins’ home state of Utah, he might be entitled to statutory damages of as much as $2,000 in claims arising from the Equifax breach. Frank, who lived in Washington, could have claimed statutory damages of $1,500. But New Yorkers in the Equifax class would be permitted only $50 for claims under New York general business law.
The class settlement, CCAF argued, does not establish subclasses to reflect the variation in damages available to class members from across the country. Nor did Equifax and class counsel seek the appointment of lawyers to represent the interests of class members from states with different damages schemes.