"designed not to gain anything for the plaintiffs but rather to generate fees for the only true beneficiaries of this disgrace: the attorneys."
Attorneys win again
Waterbury Republican-American ^ | September 17, 2005 | Editorial
...for every dollar paid for actual "damages," the lawyers got $90.
...designed not to gain anything for the plaintiffs but rather to generate fees for the only true beneficiaries of this disgrace: the attorneys."
Last month, Sony Pictures agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by moviegoers who said they were duped into buying tickets to Sony films in 2001 based on ads featuring glowing reviews by David Manning of the Ridgefield Press.
Mr. Manning never wrote such a review, and the Press never published it. But when the trial lawyers got wind of Sony's little scam, they went into writ-writing overdrive. Most media outlets let the story die after the settlement was announced, but The Washington Post followed up with a breakdown on how the loot was split.
$250,000 covered the costs associated with alerting moviegoers to the settlement and processing the claims.
$494,915 went to charity. That's what remained of the half-million dollars reserved for verifiable claims; the other $5,085 was shared by the 170 moviegoers who had saved their ticket stubs. It's probably best that they settled because it would have been tough for them to testify -- with a straight face -- that their movie-going decisions are dictated by a guy supposedly working for a weekly newspaper in Connecticut.
$458,909 compensated the trial lawyers. In other words, for every dollar paid for actual "damages," the lawyers got $90.
The trial bar hates it when we call the class-action system a racket, so we won't go there this time. Instead, we will give California Appellate Court Judge Reuben Ortega the last word: "This is the most frivolous case with which I have ever had to deal. ... We should be occupying ourselves with resolving legitimate disputes instead of laughable cases designed not to gain anything for the plaintiffs but rather to generate fees for the only true beneficiaries of this disgrace: the attorneys." |
