Heartland Security Breach Class Action: Victims $1925, Lawyers $600,000 163
Fluffeh writes "Back in 2007, Heartland had a security breach that resulted in a 130 million credit card details being lifted. A class action suit followed and many thought it would send a direct message to business to ensure proper security measures protecting their clients and customers. With the Heartland case now over and settlements paid out and divided up, the final breakdown is as follows: Class members: $1925 (11 cases out of 290 filed were 'valid'). Lawyers for the plaintiff class action: $606,192. Non-Profits: around $1,000,000 (The Court ruled a minimum of $1 million in payouts). Heartland also paid its own lawyers around $2 million. Eric Goldman (Law Professor) has additional commentary on his Law Blog: 'The opinion indicates Heartland spent $1.5M to advertise the settlement. Thus, it appears they spent over $130,000 to generate each legitimate claim. Surprisingly, the court blithely treats the $1.5M expenditure as a cost of doing business, but I can't wrap my head around it. What an obscene waste of money! Add in the $270k spent on claims administration, and it appears that the parties spent $160k per legitimate claimant. The court isn't bothered by the $270k expenses either, even though that cost about $1k per tendered claim (remember, there were 290 total claims).'"
This is _all_ class action lawsuits! (Score:3, Informative)
Most of them end up with the actual aggrieved getting $20 and the lawyers getting the six-figure payout.
Re:This is _all_ class action lawsuits! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of them end up with the actual aggrieved getting $20 and the lawyers getting the six-figure payout.
Most of them take years and the lawyers don't get paid until the end. What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work? Particularly when that six figure payout is divided among all of the lawyers on the team, their paralegals, their secretaries, their IT guy, etc.? You think IT guys should have to work for free?
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I thought that we did.
Re:This is _all_ class action lawsuits! (Score:4, Insightful)
What is wrong IMHO is that the lawyers get to put people in the Class by default. You have to specifically sign a document to be removed from the class. Most people just throw those away because they are long and confusing. It would be different if the lawyers had to advertise and convince you to be a part of the class. This could be handled much easier by people taking these companies to small claims court.
Re:This is _all_ class action lawsuits! (Score:5, Informative)
What is wrong IMHO is that the lawyers get to put people in the Class by default. You have to specifically sign a document to be removed from the class. Most people just throw those away because they are long and confusing. It would be different if the lawyers had to advertise and convince you to be a part of the class. This could be handled much easier by people taking these companies to small claims court.
Except that it couldn't... The damages for any individual person may be only that $2k... Are you willing to spend two or three weeks producing documents, responding to delaying motions from the other side, attending depositions, arguing in court, filing motions of your own, etc. for $2k? Or, where could you find a lawyer to do that work for you for those weeks for 33% of your $2k compensation?
You can't. Which is why these small suits would almost never (and, prior to class action suits, did never) get filed. And the companies know this - they know if they do something slightly evil and take a few pennies or dollars from each customer, those customers aren't going to spend the time or money to bring suit, so they'll just let it slide... and with enough customers, that company can make millions upon millions. Call it the Superman III tactic.
And incidentally, elsewhere in the comments, people mention the one woman who took Toyota to small claims court over her Prius mileage, and how, since she won, there's no need for lawyers and everyone can do the same thing. What they don't mention is that she was an unemployed lawyer with plenty of time to sit in court.
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You're gonna need a citation to back that shit up, bucko.
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Re:This is _all_ class action lawsuits! (Score:4, Insightful)
If they didn't think the odds of them making a reasonable return on the suit were good they wouldn't start it in the first place. There is something distinctly wrong with people being able to start a legal action, with me as a plaintiff without my permission. Yes it is possible that they are representing the interests of all plaintiffs to the best of their ability, not abusing the huge leeway to put their own interest first. The opposite is also patently true.
What's distinctly wrong about it? Consider, your state attorney general may bring an action against a company doing, say, illegal dumping. The attorney general isn't representing himself, he's representing the interests of all of the people in the state. In fact, the full title of these actions are frequently "the People of the State of X v. EvilCorp." Is that distinctly wrong, even though the attorney general didn't knock on your door and get you to sign on? Or is it somehow different and only distinctly wrong when the government's not involved?
Class action suits are not about compensation, they're about deterring the company from being evil. So the plaintiffs get a $20 check... would they have brought suit on their own for that $20? Or even $50? What about even $2000, as in this article? Would you take weeks off of work to spend those same weeks flying across the country to visit EvilCorp and spend hours taking depositions of their corporate board, digging through thousands of pages of emails looking for one smoking gun, hiring experts to investigate, filing repeated motions in court to oppose their motions, arguing for several days at trial, etc., for $2000? Hell, no. And so, absent class action suits, EvilCorp would get away with screwing you out of $2000, screwing me out of $2000, screwing Bob and Joe and Fred and John out of $2000 each, etc. A couple thousand here and a couple thousand there, and suddenly you're talking real money. Because none of us have the time or money to pursue such a small payout individually, they get away with screwing consumers out of millions and millions of dollars.
In a class action suit, however, the attorneys are acting as private attorneys general. The point is not getting everyone compensated with a $2000 check, the point is punishing the company for screwing their customers and making it so costly that they won't do it again.
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What's distinctly wrong about it? Consider, your state attorney general may bring an action against a company doing, say, illegal dumping. The attorney general isn't representing himself, he's representing the interests of all of the people in the state. In fact, the full title of these actions are frequently "the People of the State of X v. EvilCorp." Is that distinctly wrong, even though the attorney general didn't knock on your door and get you to sign on? Or is it somehow different and only distinctly wrong when the government's not involved?
The situation here is different in one of two ways. First, if this is a criminal action then I as an individual do not have an action to bring to the court. Second, if this is a civil action then it does not preclude me from bringing my own civil action against the company if I feel I have been harmed.
I think what people are claiming is wrong with the way class action suits are handled is that, by default, if you do not take opt-out then you waive your right to bring a suit to the court in the future.
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What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
The thing that's wrong is that the company who couldn't keep their damned systems secure could have probably made the whole thing go away and saved a lot of money by settling for $2,000 with each of the 290 original claimants which would have cost only $580,000 instead of fighting for 5 years and ending up with 11 people only getting $200 each.
If the goal for the lawyers is to truly serve their clients... they should be looking to win a quick and fast case. By drawing out the case to 5 years and raking i
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What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
The thing that's wrong is that the company who couldn't keep their damned systems secure could have probably made the whole thing go away and saved a lot of money by settling for $2,000 with each of the 290 original claimants which would have cost only $580,000 instead of fighting for 5 years and ending up with 11 people only getting $200 each.
Exactly right. Absent class action suits, the company could have "made the whole thing go away" with a pittance and non-disclosure agreements, and they never would have any incentive to actually fix their systems. You've persuasively argued for immunity from liability for corporations, no matter how evil they are.
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The thing that's wrong is that the company who couldn't keep their damned systems secure could have probably made the whole thing go away and saved a lot of money by settling for $2,000 with each of the 290 original claimants which would have cost only $580,000 instead of fighting for 5 years and ending up with 11 people only getting $200 each.
Then bitch at the company, then. The lawyers for the plaintiffs are not at fault for that.
If the goal for the lawyers is to truly serve their clients... they should be looking to win a quick and fast case.
That's a pretty stupid comment. The goal is to do things RIGHT, not just fast.
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If that were true, why do so many IT teams drag out their projects? Most of them don't get sued.
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What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
What's wrong with it? Their work is ineffective and almost meaningless. They burned $600k to earn $2k in five years for their clients. If they worked on the case for 15 years spending 2 millions USD and earning just few $ for their clients, would you still call it OK? If not, where is the border line?
How much did their clients pay? $0? So their clients made an INFINITE amount times what they spent? What a return on investment!
Re:This is _all_ class action lawsuits! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Thats because in a class action lawsuit, the lawyers are the ones doing the work for you...
Why shouldn't they get paid? You can always bring your own suit against the plaintiffs rather than take part in their suit....
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Reminds me of the Iomega Zip drive failure lawsuit (which I was part of). I got a $5 off coupon for a pack of Zip disks! Which cost like $20 back then, but woohoo me!
Sad state of affairs (Score:3)
This is sickening. No one in their right mind would argue otherwise. When lawyers make the rules (be it through lobbies or becoming lawmakers themselves), they favor their kind.
We're becoming more and more a society in which the do-nothings make out like bandits. That can't last much longer, can it?
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Re:Sad state of affairs (Score:4, Insightful)
This is sickening. No one in their right mind would argue otherwise.
Unless, you know, you actually did the math. $600k over 5 years. How much did they have to front for staff salaries? How much did they have to front for transportation? How much did they have to front for other expenses relating to the case?
Are you under the impression that we should cap their salaries, and thus make it so no one wants to take these cases on, and therefore classes of people who are wronged, but not hugely, should just shrug it off, allowing the companies to continue to do that shit?
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No, I don't think salaries should be capped. And I do think the wronged ought to be compensated. But ultimately, I think, the largest compensees (?) were the wrong party.
This woman took Honda to small claims court. (Score:5, Interesting)
This lady opted out of a class action and took Honda to small claims court and won.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/02/03/234115.htm [insurancejournal.com]
Class action or extortion? (Score:3)
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Sure, I can lodge an objection to this but even though it's woefully unfair it's not worth my time and it might be noted but it likely wouldn't be "heard". I'm just one
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In cases like this there are lots of plaintiff's with minimal damages
That's the whole fucking point of a class-action, dumbass. It's a way to bring together a lot of people who were harmed, but not by a lot, so that they can collectively take action against the company, and punish the company for harming them. If they all had to bring their own, individual lawsuit, while paying their own legal representation, or taking time off work to act as their own lawyer, how many do you think would actually do it? And the company would continue on doing that bullshit that they've been
hit them in the bank account (Score:2)
the whole point of the justice system is to make the process so expensive that a company or individual will think twice the next time about committing a tort or not following the law
if there is no economic penalty then people will just break the law if it doesn't cost them anything
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the whole point of the justice system is to make the process so expensive that a company or individual will think twice the next time about committing a tort or not following the law
if there is no economic penalty then corporations will just break the law if it doesn't cost enough to significantly impact their profits
TFTFY. OK, so "corporations are people too", but you get the drift.
end class action suits! (Score:2)
well other than actual weapons. Let's ask Marie Antoinette how that worked out.
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Or we could make small claims court easier and cheaper. Then people could take these big companies to court themselves. It would be much more expensive to fight 1000 small claims cases then to fight one big case.
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Lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws are written by lawyers, administered by lawyers, and judged by lawyers.
You can't understand laws without lawyers, you can't hope to defend yourself in court without a lawyer.
You do realize the system is set up to require a lawyer, right?
And no lawyer has any real stake in simplifying or reducing the input of lawyers.
Re:Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Lawyers in modern society fulfill the same role as the various priests and shamans fulfilled in the societies of old: control of access to the "deity" in fashion (in this case the fabled, never seen, mythical "Justice"). Overtly it is to "help" the sheep to access the deity in question, but in reality it is of course merely to satisfy avarice of the priests and their hunger to wield power over others. That is also the reason why priests are always attempting to control politics - in the old days by manipulating pharaohs, kings, emperors and the like or even becoming kings themselves (also see under "The Pope") - but in the modern times they dispensed with intermediaries and half measures and simply took the power directly, in the so called "republics" and "democracies" in which invariably at least two thirds of the power structure consists of the pries ... err ... lawyers.
Which is of course the golden rule of all parasitic priesthoods.
Also note that, just like lawyers, all the priests and shamans in history always claimed to only want to "help" their victims and thus always argue themselves "indispensable" to whatever society they happen to prey on.
Why do you think priests always insist on making the rules of the interaction with the "deity" as arcane as possible? As an example: most of history the Christian priests insisted on having their Bible in a language that common people could not read and which had to be "interpreted" for them, just as modern lawyers insist on "legalese" for the same very reasons. Unlike the Catholic priests however, modern lawyers resort to the methods of other, older, priesthoods by ever expanding and complicating (never simplifying, as you noticed) their arcane manuscripts and rituals. This is because the Judeo-Christians have essentially hobbled themselves with the idea of a "Holy Book", which offers limited room for expansion (although several of the "one, only and 100% true" improvements and revisions have been produced). Fortunately for the Christian priests, the original writers made the thing ambiguous, self-contradictory and - most importantly - voluminous enough to satisfy the purpose it was intended for.
As to "justice", the very first test to see if a society has any is to see if making offerings to and groveling before a priest, i.e. a "lawyer", is a pre-requisite for its supposed dispensation.
Note also how promise of "justice" is a key element in most religions and how much emphasis is placed on it by the religion's priests.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Please, someone. Tell me this is a troll.
no thanks (Score:2)
I've gotten several letters asking me to join class action lawsuits, and I always send them straight to the trash.
These suits aren't going to result in any meaningful personal compensation for any harm or inconvenience you have suffered. The only time I would even consider participating is if I thought it was a case of such egregious bad behavior that the company needed to be punished.
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You haven't read the letters. You are already in the class. You have to sign and return the letter to be REMOVED from the class.
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Generally, you also have to sign and return the letter to be able to collect whatever pittance is granted to members of the class if and when the case finally pays out.
Who leaked my card details? (Score:2)
Lawyers are EVIL pieces of shi+ (Score:2)
My parents lost ~$2.5 million in a ponzi scheme. They caught up with the guys who perpetrated it, and all of the clients were automatically added to a class-action suit against them preventing my parents from pursuing their own legal action. The class-action lawyers actually threatened to inhibit an individual case if my parents opted out.
Eventually, they won, and they recovered several tens of millions from these people to cover the ~$72 million he bilked the customers for. A percentage of investment that
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Why do I suspect you're exaggerating? 80% contingency fees are per se unethical and would have gotten those lawyers disbarred. If it was pursuant to a settlement agreement there isn't a judge in the country who would approve an 80% fee. If the lawyers really took 80% then report them to the state bar for discipline.
Re: 80% an exageration?!? (Score:2)
You are posting on a case where the lawyers got $660K to the plantiff's $2K. Been a while since I took math, but that is more than 80%. The "but they worked on it for 5 years!" defense strikes me as unlikely, in that it didn't take 5 full years out of their lives - they were running other cases in the meantime. Every case will have substantial downtime waiting for investigators to complete investigations, legal response timeframes to expire, deliberate delays by one side or the other for some tactical re
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Lincoln's advice to lawyers (Score:5, Interesting)
"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser -- in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."
--Abraham Lincoln
You think you could do all this yourselves? (Score:2)
I'm sickened by the pervasive knee-jerk reaction against lawyers I'm seeing in the comments here. The lawyers aren't the problem here. They prosecuted the case for five years, won the case, and still plainly lost money in the pursuit of justice. Greedy? No, you're just being willfully ignorant.
The real problem is the ruling that screwed over the victims and gave Heartland a slap on the wrist. 130 million credit card numbers stolen, 130 million identities stolen! And how much did it cost them? A pittance. An
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
$2k total out of almost $4m on the case is *justice* when being sued for a credit card breach?
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
A fair settlement in any data loss case would include significant steps taken towards preventing the same thing from happening again.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:4, Informative)
meh... I don't know... there's a reason the court was ok with awarding $2k to those 11 people.
Fact is, when your credit card is stolen, by law you're limited to paying $50 (and most bank's don't even ask you to pay that). Everything else is recovered from the merchants who accepted the fraudulent charges, and removed from the credit card balance. The bank then replaces the credit card (something Heartland would have been responsible for paying for as part of their merchant agreement).
If your bank removed all of the fraudulent charges, then you do not have a loss. Courts cannot reimburse you for fictional or imaginary losses. Furthermore, this isn't your social security number... when the credit card is replaced, the card number is changed, which means there won't be any additional fraudulent charges.
$2k is probably what those 11 people could prove they were out as a result of the breach.
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I don't live in a place where CCs are all that common, but in the US, isn't it common to use the CC number for recurrent billing? Won't this force you to spend a lot of time contacting each service provider to update that info? I think that would be a very real loss.
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Not really. Most of those if not all will reach out to you if the card fails for some reason, and I've found that explaining what happened will get them to forgive you for any kind of perceived breach of conduct or contract.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
If your bank removed all of the fraudulent charges, then you do not have a loss.
As someone who has had a fraudulent charge on my account, and as the person who submitted this story, I am amazed by your statement. I chased my (previous) bank for three weeks, made numerous phone calls and had to go into a branch twice to get my account re-imbursed the charges. If you can call that "no loss" then you must clearly place exceptionally little value on your own time and effort. Even if the bank reimbursed me for my time at my normal salary-per-hour rate, it would have been substancially more than the measly $200 that Heartland paid out to these 11 "valid" claims.
I am also quite curious about how you can claim that out of 130,000,000 credit card details that were stolen, a $2,000 settlement to victims who were really "found" is okay. People who pinch credit card details don't do it because they are bored. They don't do it to see if they can. Someone clever enough to do this sort of operation is very much likely going to sit on the cards for a while, then charge them $1 each with a statement comment of "interest fee" or "aministration fee", sell them to others for a pittance in bunches and have them see what they can rifle through before they are caught (which means that countless individuals again go through a laborious process of showing that it wasn't them spending the cash) or any other number of means to money without getting caught. I would have hoped that this class action case would have been a resounding "Pay attention to security of your customers, else it will cost you a LOT of money" message to all the other merchants out there, but sadly it has been much more of a "Meh, you win some, you lose some, you still foot the bill to the customers in the long run..." message. It is nothing short of shameful.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:5, Informative)
I chased my (previous) bank for three weeks, made numerous phone calls and had to go into a branch twice to get my account re-imbursed the charges
I would suggest changing banks then. I've had my credit card stolen too. I called my bank, they refunded the charge to the card while they investigated, and sent me a letter to sign. Received it a week later, signed it (1 statement, and a checkbox, IIRC), and sent it back. Received a replacement card about the same time. About 6 week later, they sent me a letter saying they finished the investigation, and removed the charge from the account.
I am also quite curious about how you can claim that out of 130,000,000 credit card details that were stolen, a $2,000 settlement to victims who were really "found" is okay.
The lawyers spent $1.5m contacting each of those people asking if they had any losses. 11 is all they could find.
And it isn't like these 130 million people aren't known. After the breach, auditors, forensic investigators come in.. The banks know who each and everyone of these people are. It would have all been disclosed after the breach was discovered.
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The banks whos cards were stolen were informed. That is SOP. What each bank does is up to them.. in most cases, they replace the card (which Heartland would be required to pay for)... but with 130million.. who knows.
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Whoa there, cowboy. You've only described ONE aspect of the harm done to these people. There's also a very high risk of identity theft that will come to bite them in the ass later. You can't simply ignore that.
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They're a credit card processor... they have the card number, the expiration date.. they might have the address line 1 + the zip (not required to be sent by the merchant). They may not even have the full address line 1... since the address verification only uses the first 3 digits of the address line 1 (ie: 1234 main st, is shortened to 123).
What id theft do you think is going to occur with that info?
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Do you expect the lawyers to work for free? Seriously, how much time do you think they spent on this case? Do you think they were paid the entire time they were working on it? Odds are they weren't.
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That's not even a question. Nobody said the lawyers shouldn't get paid. It's the plaintiffs who deserve more than a nearly nonexistent payout.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know... I think the article summed it up pretty nice:
Actual victims got: $1925
Heartland spent $1.5 million to find the people to give out that $1925.
Somewhere around $998,075 goes to non-profits
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit? They got $606,192.50. For helping 11 people get less than $200 each.
Nice work if you can get it.
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...except you are neglecting the actual breach.
You are also glossing over the actual cost of litigating this.
This is basic pro-corporate propaganda.
It would be nice if there were some criminal cause of action here and the relevant prosecutor(s) actually cared. In the absence of that, the only thing keeping the Soylent Corporation at bay is some self-interested lawyer.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know... I think the article summed it up pretty nice:
Actual victims got: $1925
Heartland spent $1.5 million to find the people to give out that $1925.
Somewhere around $998,075 goes to non-profits
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit? They got $606,192.50. For helping 11 people get less than $200 each.
Nice work if you can get it.
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit got $606k for helping 11 people get $2k and helping nonprofits get $1000k. Oh, and those lawyers spent 5 years doing it. And they had to pay all the costs up front, so don't forget the compound interest. And they have to pay their paralegals, staff, IT guy, rent, etc. for those 5 years. The individual lawyers probably ended up making about $20-30k per year. Not nearly as nice work, unless you can take on five or six of these at once.
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The judge would not judge something too defavorable to the lawyer, just to avoid setting bad precedent (better a justice that favor the lawyers than impunity, no?).
There is plenty of down time in a 5 years proceeding, possibly years with little to no action at all expect for a paralegal pushing some paper around a few times, and this type of case is very unlikely to fail after the initial leg work.
Maybe not the money printing scheme /. crowd think generally, but certainly not a bad business model in th
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Judges have absolutely no problem knocking down legal fees if they think they're too high. You think a judge who took a huge paycut when he left private practice is going to go out of his way to give a windfall to some lawyer who probably annoyed him during the litigation?
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Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
That might be the most idiotic thing I have ever read. What constitutes justice about paying money to a infinitesimal minority of the total affected people?
Because the total affected people were barely affected, and none of them would have been able to get a lawyer to fight this individually for them.
What is justified about paying lawyers a salary for this boondoggle?
They fronted the expense for the lawsuit and fought it... for 5 years. They managed to catch the company doing something really, really wrong, fought them in court, and won, forcing the company to change their ways. What isn't justified about paying them for that 5 years of work?
You're trying to imply there was nothing better that could have been done with millions of dollars?
I'm sure the company's CEO would have liked to buy another jet with it.
The courts shouldn't care about costs. Right. That's a pretty stupid attitude.
Thinking lawyers shouldn't get paid when they force a company to stop being evil is a pretty stupid attitude, too.
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The problem is that the lawyers negotiated both for their own pay and for the final payout. Could they settled 3 years earlier, got 5 times as much money for each of the victims, with the company paying less overall (saving mo
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:4, Insightful)
"But why should the class action lawyers settle? The longer they drag out the case, the more money they get - regardless of the benefit to the victims."
Not really, if it's a contingency case, which they usually are.
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Do you have experience litigating complex cases?
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That is an absolute crock of bullshit. Tell me, if you were one of these people, would you be willing to spend 5 years of your time, and god knows how much in expenses and court costs to sue this company? Of course you wouldn't.
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It took them (the lawyers on both sides) 5 years to agree how to split the profits.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the point of the trial is to determine guilt and punishment, that should be a job for criminal court. Civil courts exist to compensate those harmed, not just their lawyers.
I'd like to see reform of the system to dictate a maximum payout to plaintiff's lawyers of less than 25% of the amount awarded to plaintiffs.
Re:the court should not care about costs... (Score:4, Insightful)
And who would write a bill to reform the system? Lawyers?
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I'll send you a memo when I'm king.
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I'd like to see reform of the system to dictate a maximum payout to plaintiff's lawyers of less than 25% of the amount awarded to plaintiffs.
While we're at it, I'd like to see reform of your industry to cap your pay at a tiny amount as well.
That staff of lawyers were awarded $600k after 5 YEARS of work. They weren't being paid by these people in the meantime. Sliced up, and after paying rent on their offices, and for the rest of their staff, that's not a whole hell of a lot.
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Cry me a river. $600k is 300 times what these hardlyworking lawyers recovered for their plaintiffs.
Name me an industry where spending $600k in labor to produce $2k net is considered acceptable.
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Re:that's the free market for you libertarians (Score:5, Insightful)
The current system of class action lawsuits is not libertarian. It is an opt out system. The plaintiffs get to include you in the class seeking the lawsuit without your permission. This is completely backwards on how it would work in a free system. In a free system a plaintiff could ask if you want to join them and you are free to do so. The current system is only supported by regulations that allow a plaintiff to include you without your consent. They just send you a very lengthy scary legal letter that you have to sign to opt out. Most people including myself don't sign them because I don't want to read 20 pages of legal jargon and sign my name to it.
Re:that's the free market for you libertarians (Score:5, Funny)
Re:that's the free market for you libertarians (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can have libertarian ideals without being downright fucking insane. There's a split between "small l" libertarians and "big L" libertarians.
For instance, I hold the libertarian viewpoint that the government has no right to tell you what you do to or put in your own body. I also think taxes are a good thing that are necessary to provide the things needed to keep a country safe and modern. I also think that more government oversight is needed.
I really dislike this whole "group every single one of your bel
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True. But there are very interesting theories of justice under anarchy. The old west was such a time. And contrary to popular belief it was relatively safe. I mean the things the most famous gangsters did back then would barely make the local news today. The most interesting theory is that of an outlaw. You had a voluntarily justice system where those that wished to be protected by it would agree to settle disputes. As long as you accepted the ruling you were still protected by the law and those that adhere
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And what you're forgetting is that, if someone went "outlaw" on you, there was absolutely no way for you to get justice. If you sued someone for wronging you, and they decided to fuck off, then you were unable to pursue any claim to make yourself whole. That's a completely worthless justice system if I ever saw one.
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If someone went "outlaw" on you they went "outlaw" on the whole of the law abiding. You could hire someone to kill them and take their stuff. There were less homicides in the Wild West then in modern US cities.
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So now, in order for me to get justice, I have to commit murder. Sounds fan-fucking-tastic.
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With two huge exceptions... In the old west. the lower class had huge violence levels and the vigilante justice inflicted by the wealthy also generated substantial violence in the name of bringing and order (and in result producing the exact opposite.) Towards the end of the western expansion, a significant number of "Outlaws" were rebels fighting a wealthy corporate class that was bleeding the American middle class dry. All of these things and more fit very nicely into your Libertarian ideals. I can't say
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In reality, there is very, very little difference between the two.
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Absolutely right... the wild west was Libertarian, except for the occasional lynching party, those were anarchy!
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Not necessarily. It depends on the type of class certification.
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Most people including myself don't sign them because I don't want to read 20 pages of legal jargon and sign my name to it.
So you use that as an excuse for why you don't want to take responsibility for yourself? Interesting. I thought you asshats were all about "personal responsibility" and "reading the fine print". Good to see you don't actually practice it.
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I wouldn't have a problem with a letter that said if you want to be included in this lawsuit please read the following and sign it. Then it makes sense that since I want to sue I need to review the documents.
The problem is that you are automatically in the lawsuit unless you opt out. I get at least one of these things a month if not more. I don't want to sue in almost all cases but I also don't want to read 20 pages of legal jargon I have better things to do with my time. I don't make it a habit to sign thi
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Again, all I'm hearing is that you're complaining about someone making things difficult for you, and you not wanting to take "personal responsibility" for yourself. And yet, I would imagine you'd be one of those assholes who believes that it's completely legit for a credit card company to ass rape you on terms, or for a cell phone company to promise you "unlimited" yet give you something else, because "you should have read the contract."
Further, you need to actually back up your claim that you're automatica
Re:that's the free market for you libertarians (Score:4, Insightful)
The legal system is anything but a free market. This is a big payout scheme for lawyers, using public authority as a lever to make a bad-acting company pay off those who were never harmed.
It looks like a corrupt judge to me. How much of the $600k found it's way back to his pocket?
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Yeah, no. This is about as "Free Market" as it gets. The lawyers for both sides set their rates before going in.
pay off those who were never harmed.
Go fuck yourself and your "I get to decide who was harmed" bullshit.
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Yeah, no. This is about as "Free Market" as it gets. The lawyers for both sides set their rates before going in.
pay off those who were never harmed.
Go fuck yourself and your "I get to decide who was harmed" bullshit.
I didn't decide who was harmed, the court decided who had been harmed. The people who got paid off were the LAWYERS on both sides of the case and some nonprofits who had ABSOfuckingLUTELY nothing to do with the case. The LAWYERS were not harmed by the defendant. Their CLIENTS were, but the LAWYERS got all the fucking MONEY. That is not how any system that was designed to do JUSTICE would work.
And that's why they call it a LEGAL system and not a JUSTICE system. Very little justice is done. But the LEGA
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Why don't you look at how much work the lawyers put in, over how many years.
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Why don't you look at how much work the lawyers put in, over how many years.
I think it would be interesting to know how much of that work and time was actually necessary and much served to pad pockets.
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In other words, how much they milked this case for, with the plaintiffs getting mostly delay.
I bet the defendants offered to settle the case and pay the plaintiffs a lot more than $175 each just to stop the bloodletting that the plaintiffs' lawyers were giving them, and the plaintiffs' lawyers ignored their clients' best interest because if they dragged the case out another few months they could bill another hundred thousand.