Consumers frequently receive only a paltry fraction of class action settlement funds, which are instead doled out to plaintiffs’ lawyers, cy pres recipients, and administrators. Now this problem is compounded by a recent...more
Takeaway: When evaluating the fairness of a proposed class settlement, Federal Rule 23(e)(2) requires a district court to take into account, among other considerations, the terms of any proposed award of attorneys’ fees and...more
When you finally reach an agreement to settle a hotly contested class action, you want more than anything for the court to approve your settlement agreement and for the case to be over. But, to get to the end of the case,...more
When negotiating a class action settlement, lawyers on both sides may need to consider whether subgroups within the class need to be separately represented by different counsel. The First Circuit recently reached that...more
The author presented the following paper at the 2020 Class Actions National Institute of the American Bar Association. What makes mediating a class action different from mediating an individual case? In both settings,...more
When a class action settlement is proposed for approval, the class members have three options, (1) they can remain in the settlement class, (2) opt-out of the settlement to preserve their individual claims, or (3) they can...more
As I have discussed in earlier posts, there are multiple stakeholders to class action settlements, including named plaintiffs, absent class members, class counsel, defendants, and the courts. Conflicts can arise within some...more
In September 2019, the Federal Trade Commission issued a staff report titled “Consumers and Class Actions: A Retrospective and Analysis of Settlement Campaigns.” The FTC staff studied 149 consumer class action settlements and...more