John Stossel featured the Google Location History settlement as an example of class action abuse. Stossel explains in the video that all of $62 million recovered from Google settlement has been diverted to third-party beneficiaries. Anna St. John of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, who represents objectors to the settlement, explained “the settlement itself would not be a problem if that money were actually going to the people who were harmed.”
Stossel recounted how settlement beneficiaries promised to help “activists,” “people seeking transgender healthcare,” and another promised preferential treatment for “BIPOC communities.” He asked if it wasn’t a conflict of interests for class attorneys to dole out settlement money like this. St. John agreed, observing that:
It’s a huge conflict of interests. Six of the attorneys, or Google employees involved in the case, sit on the boards… of the recipients getting millions of dollars. You have this slush fund of tens of millions of dollars, and the parties and the judge are allowed to decide who should get this money. And when they have a choice between distributing that money to millions of class members who are not going to say “thank you,” versus directing millions of dollars to their alma maters, to organizations where they sit on the board, the choice is clear…
“So the guys that did bad get to reward their friends?” Stossel asked. St. John agreed: the settlement gives money to groups Google already gives money to.
“This is a left-wing money-raiser?” “It is.”
See the segment below:
You can watch the entire video on John Stossel’s YouTube channel, @StosselTV.
Approval of the settlement was granted by the district court, but HLLI has appealed on behalf of three objectors, who filed their opening brief on Friday. You can read more about the case here.