Law.com’s Amanda Bronstad covers the Department of Justice’s statement of interest to the Lenny & Larry’s settlement, which the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute objected to:
The claims deadline was Jan. 29. Ted Frank, a class action critic who argued against a cy pres award last fall in a case against Google before the U.S. Supreme Court, filed an objection to the Lenny & Larry’s deal. He said he was “encouraged” by the DOJ’s filing, which raised many of the same concerns he had in his Jan. 28 filing.
According to the DOJ’s filing, only 10 percent of the 90,566 claimants wanted cookies over cash, which meant class members would each end up getting less money while most of the cookies would end up as free giveaways to retailers.
“This cookie giveaway does not benefit class members at all; instead, it is effectively a promotional opportunity for Lenny & Larry’s and their longstanding health food retailers to draw in consumers with free samples,” he wrote. “Rather than convey the bulk of its benefit to class members, the proposed settlement appears to be a marketing campaign to distribute defendant’s cookies to the public.”
Further, the plaintiffs’ fee request is “outlandish,” Lewis wrote, and should be somewhere between $228,000 and $463,000.
Wallan predicted that the fee request would change after the parties redraft the settlement. He also criticized the DOJ’s “gross misconstruction of the term of cy pres,” which are leftover funds that normally go to charities.
He expected to file the new settlement “within days.”