A Litigator Fights Class-Action Suits

The Wall Street journal writes a profile on Center for Class Action Fairness' founder Ted Frank and his efforts to fight settlements that give the class members very little and platiffs' lawyers too much.

Mr. Frank is a relative newcomer to the burgeoning world of class-action objectors. Objectors are lawyers who swoop in at the 11th hour and make formal objections to settlements hammered out between corporate defendants and "classes" of individuals who have alleged that a company has defrauded its investors or created a product that injured consumers.

"Class actions have a place in our legal system, but right now they're corrupt in so many ways," said Mr. Frank, who in 2009 left a position at a right-leaning think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, to launch a new career as a litigator focusing on class actions. "Plaintiffs' lawyers are getting rich without winning anything for their clients, and the consumers are getting ripped off," he says.

"The fact is that he's been able to persuade courts to finally look seriously at issues that they used to completely ignore," said Lester Brickman, an expert on class-action litigation and a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

"Ted has already made a big difference," said Mr. Jacobson, a Debevoise & Plimpton partner. "Even if he accomplishes nothing else, he'll have had a greater impact than most lawyers will achieve in their careers."

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal.