Money For Nothing: SCOTUS Could Stop Class Action Funds From Being Steered To Non-Parties
Forbes cited CEI’s Senior Attorney Ted Frank and Senior Attorney Melissa Holyoak on Supreme Court case Frank v. Gaos.
Competitive Enterprise Institute attorney Ted Frank will be arguing for himself in Frank v. Gaos as a member of a class of Google customers who received nothing from an $8.5 million settlement of privacy litigation that paid plaintiff lawyers $2.2 million in fees.
…………………………………….
No one has a precise count of the class action settlements that include cy pres payments, and Frank said many may be included in quiet agreements that are never disclosed to the class. Federal courts dispose of about 275,000 cases a year, with 350 of them class actions.
Opposing Frank and CEI is a broad selection of liberal-leaning states, consumer protection organizations and Google, which says the Supreme Court shouldn’t have taken this case in the first place because cy pres-only settlements are so rare – less than one a year – that they don’t merit the fuss.