Possibly The Worst Class Action Settlement Ever Approved

Forbes praises Center for Class Action Fairness and highlights portions of their appellate brief. 

Objectors have appealed Judge Vratil’s decision. Among them is my friend Ted Frank, who runs the Center for Class Action Fairness, now part of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Center’s appellate brief is, in my opinion, brilliant, and it makes a shambles of the Kansas District Court ruling. Here are a few of its highlights:

Class counsel structured a settlement to pay attorneys a proposed $24.7 million, an amount wholly disproportionate to the benefit (perhaps one cent per consumer per year, before considering any costs of conversion) to be realized by the class.

The judge declared the superiority of ATC when legislators and regulators had rejected this method. Judges have no business substituting their own policy preferences for those of legislators, even if their grounds for doing have an economic foundation, which is absent here.

Read the full article at Forbes.