Frivolous Lawsuits and Class Action Lawsuits
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Most recent one picked up off the web...
Class action abuses may have been "substantially reduced by the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005," said James Copland, director of the Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute.
But that doesn't mean outrageous settlements have become a thing of the past. Class action lawsuits remain among the favored big-ticket paths to fame and riches for trial lawyers. Attorneys fees can range anywhere from 15 to more than 30 percent of a settlement, and courts have tremendous discretion in awarding both fees and allowable attorneys costs in a case, which means a sympathetic judge can be the key to a lucrative outcome.
Here are some of the worst examples:
Among the firms taking the lion's share of those settlements were Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman & Robbins, with more than $7 billion, and Milberg Weiss, which netted $1.6 billion, New York Law Journal reported in March.
Though lead paint for interior walls hasn't been manufactured in this nation since the 1950s, a Rhode Island court ordered three leading companies to clean the offensive material from roughly 240,000 buildings, at an estimated cost of $3 billion. The South Carolina-based Motley Rice law firm will collect settlements of at least 16 percent on the cases that result.
"Asbestos cases really are high-dollar," said Copland. Trial lawyers raking in the millions include Ronal Motley, of Motley Rice; Peter Angelos, of the Maryland firm bearing his name, and Fred Baron, founder of the Texas Baron & Budd.
Fen-phen cases have been extremely lucrative for trial attorneys: Elizabeth Cabraser helped bring in millions for her California firm, for example, and Stan Chesley of Cincinnati collected more than $20 million, even though he had little-to-no direct contact with case clients, according to the Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal.
The settlement calls for UST, Inc., the maker of Copenhagen and Skoal, to dole out $816 coupons for each claimant to make future purchases of the smokeless product, at an estimated total cost of $65 million -- and $17 million more in legal fees.
"Lawyers Gone Wild" is a series of special reports by The Examiner looking at the cost and consequences of class action lawsuit abuse in the United States. Read the latest articles in the series.
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