State Street Class Action Fee Probe Enmeshes Pension Fund Official
Wednesday’s hearing is likely to expose “substantial shenanigans,” said class action activist Ted Frank.
Google Privacy Case To Test Limits Of Novel Settlements
Law360 cited CCAF attorney Anna St. John and Director of Litigation Ted Frank after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear CEI's case, Frank v. Gaos. CEI hopes the court rules in our favor and creates a standard that forbids attorneys from misusing class action settlements to selfishly put themselves and third parties ahead of their clients. Justices are set for the first time to consider the cy pres remedy, which distributes awards in class actions to parties…
Supreme Court to Decide on Reining in Class-Action Deals that Only Pay Lawyers and their Favored Institutions
Critics of these settlements described them as a form of suspect collusion between plaintiffs' lawyers and corporate defendants, since both benefit by arranging a settlement. Leading the challenge to these deals is Ted Frank, a Washington lawyer who regularly objects to class-action settlements.
Class Settlement Flaw Exposed in Case Over Smart Phone Batteries
Bloomberg Law discusses our ninth-circuit appeal in the lithium ion antitrust litigation: A possible vehicle for federal courts to revisit the inconsistent treatment comes in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by a class action advocacy group. The Center for Class Action Fairness is seeking to undo an October 2017 settlement in In Re: Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litigation, a multi-district lawsuit on a price-fixing…
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Posner Leaves ‘Enormous Imprint’ on Class Actions
“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.
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WSJ: Congress Can Rescind the CFPB’s Gift to Trial Lawyers
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…
3rd Circ. Asked To Nix Approval of $5.5M Google Privacy Deal
Not only did class counsel make no effort to distribute any money to the class here, but there are obvious conflicts of interest associated with the cy pres recipients, Frank asserted, noting that Google is a regular donor to four of the entities and co-lead class counsel Brian Strange is board chairman of another, Public Counsel.
The Recorder: Objectors Slam No-Cash Settlement in Facebook Message-Scanning Suit
"Cynical." That's the descriptor lawyers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Class Action Fairness used to describe a proposed no-cash deal Facebook Inc. reached to settle a privacy class action earlier this year.
Thornton Law, others to pay $2m for probe of their bills
“It’s ironic, because any corporation caught telling investors something this misleading would surely face litigation from Labaton and Thornton,” Frank said after the hearing.
Judge Launches Investigation Into Law Firms’ Inflated Bills
“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.”
