High Court Case Threatens Key Source Of Legal Aid Funding
Law 360 cited CEI’s Senior Attorney Ted Frank and Senior Attorney Melissa Holyoak on Frank v. Gaos case.
Frank and Holyoak, the petitioners asking the high court to rein in cy pres, contend that this practice of funneling settlement money to nonprofits has opened the door to improper class actions including, they say, the one at the heart of the Supreme Court petition.
“The fact that legal aid organizations do good things and could use the money doesn’t justify the means,” said Frank, who is also director of the Center for Class Action Fairness at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
At the core of their petition, Frank and Holyoak are attacking “cy-pres only” settlements like the one in the underlying Gaos v. Google case, which accused Google of selling user search terms containing personally identifiable information to advertisers.