Is there any scenario more corrupt and inequitable than the manner in
which most class action matters are resolved, i.e., the individual
responsible for the proceedings (class representative) and the class
members
get a supreme shafting while the lawyers walk away with sacks of
cash and incompetent politicians/lawmakers jump on the bandwagon by
creating laws to prevent the abuses they failed to recognize and
prevent. In most instances the corporate defendants admit no wrong
doing and escape with paying back a fraction of their illegal gains.

Perhaps those of you ensconsced in these honorable professions
(lawyer,politician,judge, white collar criminal) would care to
enlighten me in so far as the following topics are concerned. Bear
in mind I am just an insignificant sub-human who aspires to become a
class representative, and during the course of the past six months has
devoted a considerable amount of time interacting with lawyers and
researching issues.


1) Despite the fact a class action case is essentially a contingency
arrangement (25 to 33%) whereby the lawyer agrees to represent the
plaintiff on behalf of the class, the class representative usuualy
walks away with some crumbs, a few thousand bucks, which some
black-robed buffoon deems adquate compensation for their involvement.

QUESTION:

Why shouldn't a class representative be entitled to a percentage of
the settlement? Ohhh, I guess it must be due to the fact they don't
have a license to steal hanging in their office?. Am I to believe the
members of the class would vehemently object to a class plaintiff
receiving a few percent of the settlement amount? Maybe this is a
taboo issue since any money the class plaintiff receives is deducted
form the lawyers pot of gold?


Erin Brockovich, some bimbo who did a little legwork for a legal firm,
received a million dollar "performance bonus" by the law firm she was
associated with. Why should the contribution of the class plaintiff
be valued any less than some high school drop out with a 38 D-cup?
Why should class members be content with 1 or 2 bucks on the dollar?
I was formerly affilated with the 15th largest bank in the US. They
paid out 15 million to settle a class action matter which impacted
200,000 victims for a scam which spanned a 5 year period. The
compensation these hapless bank customers received was totally
inadquate while the lawyers skipped off with 4 or 5 million. The
incompetent, paper shuffling state regulators who failed to safeguard
the public interest were not called to task ....and did not levy any
punitive fines.

I was not surprised to learn of a lawyer offering the proprietor of a
consumer advocate website 5% for any case referrals. This offer,
which the website founder refused, was veiled as a donation to
support the website.



2) During the course of the past 6 months I have had to spoon feed
lawyers the facts which support my case. The 7th law office I have
contacted is on the verge of accepting this complex, multi-district
case. Lawyer #4 was interested in the case but was frightened away
upon learning I had simultaneously presented the cases to another
office in the same city, despite the fact I had yet to meet with any
lawyer and never signed any papers. Absolutely NO attorney-client
relationship existed but this lawyer obviously wanted to avoid getting
back stabbed by a peer. Of course he was eager to refer me to two
other law offices which he assured me were very capable. Can you
spell r-e-f-e-r-r-a-l f-e-e? This lawyer was setting himself
up to receive a substantial amount of coin, undoubtedly many times
the amount I stand to gain as class representative, for doing
nothing else than providing me with a phone number. WHAT A COUNTRY !
!

QUESTION:

Why did lawyer number 4 act as if he was giving me a winning lotto
ticket when he divulged the following tidbit regarding incentive
awards, "tell your lawyer you want the incentive award amount to be
part of the settlement agreement", i.e., don't just grovel before
some guano-for-brains judge and beg for a handout. He was implying
the proposed defendant in one of my cases (annual revenue over 100
billion) would not balk at a request for a $20,000 incentive award.
Why did this lawyer preceed this tidbit of advice with the comment,
"Most lawyers won't give you the advice I am about to offer regarding
incentive awards". Didn't he realize he was underscoring the lack
of ethics which plagues the legal profession by implying the
knowledge he was about to convey was "confidential".

I am well aware of the fact that any monies awarded to the class
plaintiff MUST be ok'ed by the omnipotent courtroom God, aka judge.
These examples of settlement funds being offered to "fringe players"
(brokovich, illegal donation offer and referral fees) confirm there
are adquate funds to properly compensate the class plaintiff but the
profession/system lacks integrity.


3) I have become aware of Senate Bill 274 and there appears to
some justifcation to federalize all class action matters......... but
this Bill appears to favor big business at the expense of the
consumer. Information presented at a law office website claims the
bill will eliminate all incentive awards;

"In addition, Senate Bill 274 seeks to discourage citizens from
safeguarding their rights through class action lawsuits by denying the
named plaintiffs in these suits any additional compensation, called
“incentive awards.” Incentive awards are payments to the
class representatives approved by the court after the suit has been
successfully resolved as a reward for having stepped forward and
undertaken substantial service to the class by agreeing to serve as
the class representative".

QUESTION:

Is Senate Bill 274 anti-consumer? Given the abudnance of corporate
larcency which now exists what purpose is served by a law which gives
white collar criminals a license to steal? The two companies I have
identified as engaging in fraud have combined annual revenues of over
200 billion and their lawless antics have been taking place for a
number of years.

rogerkowalski <rogerkowalski@yahoo.com> wrote:Erin Brockovich, some bimbo who did a little legwork for a legal firm,received a million dollar "performance bonus" by the law firm she wasassociated with. Why should the contribution of the class plaintiffbe valued any less than some high school drop out with a 38 D-cup?

Did you watch the movie "Erin Brockovich"? She pushed the law firm
into following up on what initially looked like a routine claim for a
few thousand bucks over the price to be paid for the properties under
Eminent Domain. She went out and interviewed the victims, got them to
talk about their problems. Did the research to find out that Cr(6)
was toxic while other forms like Cr(3) and Cr(7) aren't.

She was hired as a legal clerk, but ended up doing the work of a
high-powered Private Investigator. _That_ is why she got a million
dollar performance bonus. And the plaintiffs in that case got a lot
more than peanuts.

The reason that plaintiffs in most class actions get only a few
dollars is that their loss is usually only a few dollars. That is
part of the reason why we have class actions. If some company cheats
you out of $10, it isn't worthwhile going to court over. You'd spend
hours in depositions and court and end up with $10 for all your
trouble? And if the case is complex enough to need a lawyer, forget
it. You'd spend thousands or even hundreds of thousands on lawyers
fees for your $10.

But if the company has cheated a million people out of $10 each, it
becomes worthwhile for a lawyer to pursue the case. Chances are the
case will eventually be settled, maybe for $5 for each plaintiff. The
lawer takes $2 from each plaintiff's share of the settlement, which
can amount to real money if there are 4 million people in the class.
And the lead plaintiffs usually get some significant amount of money
(thousands, not millions). This pays them for the trouble they will
have gone through -- attending trials and depositions, confronting the
opposition lawyers, etc.

In a complex class action case, the lawyer will spend thousands of
hours finding out what happened, gathering evidence, interviewing
people, negotiating with defendant's attorneys and/or trying the case
in court. A topnotch lawyer may get $500/hour for hiser time. And
then there's the possibility that the case may fall through - they may
discover that it can't be proved, or they may go all the way to trial
and lose anyway. Shouldn't the lawyer be compensated for the time and
expense heesh puts into the case?

Alternatively, you could ban class actions. That would get rid of the
annoying lawyers collecting millions while the individual plaintiffs
get a pittance. But it would also mean that large companies would be
able to cheat people out of small amounts of money and _never_ have to
pay it back because nobody would be able to afford to take them to
court.

And _that_ is why you read all the anti-lawyer propaganda. After a
company has pulled some illegal and immoral shenanigans and find that
they have to pay the money back, possibly with something added to
remind them not to do it again (punitive damages), they get mad about
it and want to shoot all the lawyers. Except, of course, for the
lawyers who work for them and draw up one-sided contracts for all
their customers to sign.
--
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and
to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples, promising
liberty and justice for all.

In article <10abgvk25h9gihbfej3ah65jni8uqfge9k@4ax.com> in
misc.legal.moderated, Barry Gold <bgold@nyx.net> wrote:The reason that plaintiffs in most class actions get only a fewdollars is that their loss is usually only a few dollars. That ispart of the reason why we have class actions. If some company cheatsyou out of $10, it isn't worthwhile going to court over.

If some company cheats you out of more than that, it's probably not
worth going to court over, as an individual. I think class-action
suits make a lot of sense.

What bothers me, a lot, is that often the settlement is for the
company to provide discount coupons to the class members, rather
than actual cash. "We cheated you once; here's a coupon so you can
buy from us again. Guess what: you have to spend more money to
'recover' what you lost before. And by the way, the coupon's around
the value of our gross margin anyway so it's not costing us
anything."

--
I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. When you read anything
legal on the net, always verify it on your own, in light of your
particular circumstances. You may also need to consult a lawyer.

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com

"Barry Gold" <bgold@nyx.net> wrote in message
news:10abgvk25h9gihbfej3ah65jni8uqfge9k@4ax.com...
In a complex class action case, the lawyer will spend thousands of hours finding out what happened, gathering evidence, interviewing people, negotiating with defendant's attorneys and/or trying the case in court. A topnotch lawyer may get $500/hour for hiser time. And then there's the possibility that the case may fall through - they may discover that it can't be proved, or they may go all the way to trial and lose anyway. Shouldn't the lawyer be compensated for the time and expense heesh puts into the case?

Yes, my heart especially goes to those lawyers who get
"compensated for their time" to the tune of a few billion dollars.
(asbestoes, tobacco, etc.)

Until the legal profession is willing to reform its lottery-type
method of rewarding itself, it will have to live with the image
it has earned for lawyers as that of bloodsucking vultures.

Don

I wrote:The reason that plaintiffs in most class actions get only a fewdollars is that their loss is usually only a few dollars. That ispart of the reason why we have class actions. If some company cheatsyou out of $10, it isn't worthwhile going to court over. If some company cheats you out of more than that, it's probably not worth going to court over, as an individual. I think class-action suits make a lot of sense.


Stan Brown wrote: What bothers me, a lot, is that often the settlement is for the company to provide discount coupons to the class members, rather than actual cash. "We cheated you once; here's a coupon so you can buy from us again. Guess what: you have to spend more money to 'recover' what you lost before. And by the way, the coupon's around the value of our gross margin anyway so it's not costing us anything."

Yes, I think that's a problem. Perhaps we should ban that type of
settlement -- require that the lawyer's fee in a class action be based
on actual cash (or equivalent) received by plaintiffs and not on
putative value of coupons, free merchandise, etc. That would provide an
incentive to make sure that the plaintiffs in the class actually receive
something, rather than the defendants buying off the plaintiffs'
attorneys with something that is useless to many plaintiffs and costs
the defendant little or nothing.

OTOH, I note that many of the suits that are settled for such discounts
are for things like anti-trust violations. I was never all that keen on
anti-trust even when I was a teenage liberal. As a libertarian, I have
no use for it at all. So maybe it's not so bad. "Well, we violated one
of the many technical rules the government puts in because it thinks it
knows better than the market how things should be priced, so we'll give
you a discount if, unlike the government and the named plaintiffs, you
aren't all that dissatisfied with our product/service."

I wrote: In a complex class action case, the lawyer will spend thousands of hours finding out what happened, gathering evidence, interviewing people, negotiating with defendant's attorneys and/or trying the case in court. A topnotch lawyer may get $500/hour for hiser time. And then there's the possibility that the case may fall through - they may discover that it can't be proved, or they may go all the way to trial and lose anyway. Shouldn't the lawyer be compensated for the time and expense heesh puts into the case?


Don K wrote: Yes, my heart especially goes to those lawyers who get "compensated for their time" to the tune of a few billion dollars. (asbestoes, tobacco, etc.) Until the legal profession is willing to reform its lottery-type method of rewarding itself, it will have to live with the image it has earned for lawyers as that of bloodsucking vultures.

Well, let's start with the tobacco cases. Those are arguable either
way(*). ON the one hand, tobacco _is_ a hazardous product. It causes
heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, emphysema, etc. People who smoke
get sick, have more days off work, die earlier than those who don't.
But on the other hand, smokers made a conscious choice to smoke. Surely
they should accept the consequences of their decision(+). On the third
hand, the tobacco companies have been lying about tobacco for decades.
They claimed all the research that proved tobacco is hazardous to your
health was wrong. And of course that tobacco isn't all _that_
addictive. (Studies have shown it's more addictive than "crack"
cocaine.)

So, if somebody acquires an addiction to something that was sold to them
under the pretense that it's not as dangerous as it really is, should
they be able to recover their losses (healthcare expenses, early death,
days off work, pain from cancer, etc.)? Should they perhaps receive
only a _portion_ of their losses, with some apportionment between the
smoker for making the decision to start smoking _and_ to continue
smoking(&), and the manufacturers and sellers for a decades-long
campaign of intentional misinformation about the dangers of their
product?

(*)This, of course, is what makes lawsuits -- if it were obvious who was
in the right, the side in the wrong usually folds. Even if you have
lots of money to spend on lawyers, it's usually better to pay off one
person (or stop bugging one person) than to lose a suit and have a
public precedent that others can use.

(+) At least I, as a libertarian, think so.

(&) Even if tobacco/nicotine is more addictive than cocaine, it is
_still_ possible to quit if you really want to. Millions of people do
every year. Further, even if you still need your nicotine fix, you can
use patches or gum and avoid polluting your lungs -- and your
neighbors/family/
co-workers' lungs.


OK, now that we've dealt with tobacco, with is very much a "both sides
are wrong" issue, we can go on to asbestos. Asbestos also causes a
variety of diseases. People who mine it used to die in about 10 years.
Then they improved the filters, and the miners died in 20-30 years.
Many people who are exposed to asbestos don't even know about it. It's
buried in walls or in "cottage cheese" ceilings or otherwise in their
environment. Further, the companies who manufactured asbestos _knew_
that it caused all these diseases, but they continued to make and sell
it without giving a word of warning to the buyers or to those who would
be indirectly exposed. Or at least, they _should_ have known. That's
the usual standard for "negligence": if a reasonably prudent person
would have known this is dangerous, than you are either negligent
because you kept doing it even knowing it was dangerous, or because you
failed to take those steps a reasonable person would have taken to
acquire that knowledge.

I say they "should have known" it, because I remember reading an article
in "Life" magazine in the early 60s. It listed all the (then-known)
diseases caused by asbestos: asbestosis, lung cancer, stomach cancer,
mesothelioma. In fact, if you look up asbestos in wikipedia, you will
find warnings about it as far back as 1898 (in the UK), with insurance
company reports in the US in 1918.

So, which part of this process do you object to? Do you think the
workers and consumers who were injured or killed by asbestos shouldn't
be compensated? Oh, those poor asbestos manufacturers. They got rich
selling it for years and years. Now they have to give most of the money
they made back to the people they injured, and some went broke if they
didn't have enough other (safer) products to fall back on.

Or do you think the lawyers shouldn't get paid for going to court and
_proving_ in court that this was a dangerous product and that the
manufacturers sold it, knowing it was dangerous and concealing that fact
from the buyers? Do you think the asbestos manufacturers just quietly
decided to pay all the claims? What world are you living in? Of course
they didn't! They fought tooth and nail, forcing the plaintiff's
lawyers to prove every point in the suit. They didn't concede
(stipulate to) _anything_. So the lawyers had to go to court and bring
in proof -- studies, experts, etc. to convince a judge and jury that
this was a very dangerous substance. And further prove that defendants
had a "duty of care" toward the people who were injured by it, and that
the defendants failed in that "duty of care", and that the plaintiffs
were harmed as a result. And prove how _much_ plaintiffs were harmed.
Without _all_ that, they either wouldn't have gotten a cent, or they
would have gotten a lot less than the plaintiffs were rightfully
entitled to.

Asbestos wasn't a case where the plaintiffs got pennies and the lawyers
got rich. The lawyers got rich -- at least the successful ones did --
but the plaintiffs got paid back for their losses to the tune of
multiple $100,000s or even millions.

Again, the only reason the lawyers got so much is that they represented
multiple plaintiffs, each of whom got what he was entitled to(%).

(%) or at least, a substantial portion. The lawyers probably got 1/3,
and those cases that were settled probably got less than the full amount
(but that "less than" took into account the risk of _losing_, which is
always possible when you go to court). But isn't 2/3 of what you lost
better than 100% of nothing, or 100% of some pitfully small settlement
offered by the defendants if they think you have a weak lawyer?


As for the "lottery-type method of rewards," _every_ entrepreneur in the
world is rewarded on that basis. Every day, thousands of people open
restaurants. They bet 10s or 100s of thousands of their money (paying
rent, employees, etc) and months or years of their own labor, that they
can make money in that business. About 2/3 of them are wrong, and go
out of business in less than a year. Of the other 1/3, most end up
making a decent middle-class living out of it, while working 14 hours a
day, 6 or 7 days a week. If they are lucky, they can sell the
restaurant and retire when they get too old to do that any more. And
maybe 2% of them srike it rich, either opening a very profitable
restaurant where they can pay other people to do most of the work (after
the first few years), or even manage to turn it into a chain and
_really_ make money.

A lawyer does the same thing. He hangs out his shingle, advertises in
the yellow pages, asks everybody he knows for referrals. The success
rate for lawyers is rather higher, I'd imagine, but then you need 7
years of higher education (4 year degree plus 3 years of law school)
before you can get started (aside from a few well-paying summer
internships). All you need for a restaurant is the belief that you can
cook a little better than average. If the lawyer can't attract clients,
or can't deliver what the client wants, he'll end up doing something
else for a living.

My understanding is that a significant percentage of people with law
degrees end up doing something else, something in which knowing the law
is either unrelated or only tangential, or perhaps is important but not
so much so that it _has_ to be done by a lawyer.

SO, why is it OK for somebody to take a chance on an oil well, knowing
that some will come up dry but if you are good enough will produce that
you can make a profit overall, but not OK for a lawyer to do the same
with a lawsuit? Some lawsuits "come up dry" -- you lose, either early
on when you find out the case isn't worth pursuing, or perhaps at the
very end, when you have spent $100,000s on investigators and experts and
copying expenses and... and perhaps 2 years of time from 3 or 4
expensive attorneys, and then the jury decides it wasn't the defendant's
fault, or that the right level of compensation is much less than you
thought. Others pay off big.

If lawyers can't take that kind of case ("on contingency"), then you
will see people that have been cheated, crippled, killed, but they can't
sue the business that did it to them because they can't pay the up-front
fees. Is that the kind of world you want to live in?

In article <pqtnd1hj5cd3lmshn6fuapi92atmiv7cp1@4ax.com>,
Barry Gold <barrydgold@comcast.net> wrote:Stan Brown wrote: What bothers me, a lot, is that often the settlement is for the company to provide discount coupons to the class members, rather than actual cash. "We cheated you once; here's a coupon so you can buy from us again. Guess what: you have to spend more money to 'recover' what you lost before. And by the way, the coupon's around the value of our gross margin anyway so it's not costing us anything."Yes, I think that's a problem. Perhaps we should ban that type ofsettlement -- require that the lawyer's fee in a class action be basedon actual cash (or equivalent) received by plaintiffs and not onputative value of coupons, free merchandise, etc.

The new federal class action rules require that if attorney's
fees are based on the value of coupons, the fees must be based
only on the value of the coupons that are redeemed. Judges are
also encouraged to look at the actual benefit to class members
in coupon settlements and to require that unclaimed coupons be
donated to charity.

<http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ002.109>
--
John Carr (jfc@mit.edu)

In article <1k1td1h331euknobljevhrlpes38ifkju4@4ax.com>,
John F. Carr <jfc@mit.edu> wrote:
The new federal class action rules require that if attorney'sfees are based on the value of coupons, the fees must be basedonly on the value of the coupons that are redeemed.

Which is defined how? (For instance, if a book publisher offered
coupons worth 35% off list, but BooksAMillion, Amazon, BarnesandNoble,
etc. offered the books at 33% off list, are the coupons worth 35% or
2%?)
Judges arealso encouraged to look at the actual benefit to class membersin coupon settlements and to require that unclaimed coupons bedonated to charity.

I think it would be a lot more appropriate if the lawyers got, say,
25% across the board: 25% of the cash, 25% of the coupons, etc. Then
their fee is clearly based on the value of the coupons, which is what
they get by selling them.

Seth