Today the Supreme Court granted cert in Frank v. Gaos, a challenge to the class action settlement negotiated by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in Gaos v. Google which provided $0 to class members and $8.5 million to be divided between the plaintiffs’ lawyers – who received $1000/hour on this case – and third-party charities unrelated to the case.
This blog post was published when the Center for Class Action Fairness was a project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) has long opposed abusive “cy pres” settlements that benefit third-party beneficiaries instead of compensating class members; Ted Frank wrote about the issue in 2008 before founding CCAF, and Ted Frank has testified to Congress concerning cy pres settlements. As Reuters reporter Alison Frankel wrote after CCAF’s win in the Eighth…
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 –…
CCAF objected to the class action settlement negotiated by the plaintiffs' lawyers because it provided $0 to class members and $8.5 million to be divided between the plaintiffs’ lawyers – who received $1000/hour on this case – and third-party cy pres recipients, including class counsel's alma maters, and several organizations that Google already supports through donations.
