Brief of the Week: Will Battery Class Action Energize Supreme Court?

The National Law Journal features Ted Frank's work on the Center for Class Action Fairness's case Frank v. Poertner.

Fank's beef is that many class action settlements benefit attorneys at the expense of absent class members. As those plantiffs are not involved in negotiations, lawyers can have little incentive to advocate for them, he said. 

From his Washingotn office, Frank has filed objections to settlments accros the country to try to make systematic changes to class action law. 

In Poertner, a class of consumers sued Gillette and Procter & Gamble for fraudulently cliaming that "Duracell Ultra" betteries were longer lasting than other Duracells. 

The sides agreed to a settlement where the class recieved less than $345,000 but their laywers took home $5.6 million. Additionally, the defendants had to give $6 million worth of batteries to charity, but could include existing donation programs in that calculation. 

Frank took issue with these terms, so he bought a pack of "Ultra" batteries from Amazon.com to become a class member. "This is really a settlement structured to benefit the attorneys and nobody else," he said. 

Read the full article at the National Law Journal.