Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Monday, April 28, 2014

Ninth Circuit win in Apple MagSafe case

The Apple MagSafe settlement paid the attorneys $3.1 million, but the class less than a quarter of that, yet the district court rubber-stamped settlement approval without addressing the objection to the self-dealing by class counsel, and, worse, imposed an illegal $15,000 bond to appeal the case. We posted the bond and appealed. (Briefing and oral argument here.) Thursday, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded for consideration under the appropriate legal standards, and was especially critical of the abusive appeal bond. The most comprehensive coverage is by Daniel Fisher at Forbes.com. There are also stories at The Recorder and Law360 behind subscription paywalls.

I'll note that three times now federal courts have imposed excessive appeal bonds on Center appeals on the non sequitur of a ground that the appeal had little chance of success, and we're two for two in such cases, with the third one pending.

We're also four for four in Ninth Circuit cases, and nine for eleven in intermediate federal courts (eight for ten as appellants).

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Wasserman on cy pres

University of Pittsburgh Law Professor Rhonda Wasserman has a paper on cy pres forthcoming in the USC Law Review, "Cy Pres in Class Action Settlements." The paper discusses in detail two CCAF cases, In re Baby Products Antitrust Litig., and Marek v. Lane.
Monies reserved to settle class action lawsuits often go unclaimed because absent class members cannot be identified or notified or because the paperwork required is too onerous. Rather than allow the unclaimed funds to revert to the defendant or escheat to the state, courts are experimenting with cy pres distributions – they award the funds to charities whose work ostensibly serves the interests of the class “as nearly as possible.” 
Although laudable in theory, cy pres distributions raise a host of problems in practice. They often stray far from the “next best use,” sometimes benefitting the defendant more than the class. Class counsel often lacks a personal financial interest in maximizing direct payments to class members because its fee is just as large if the money is paid cy pres to charity. And if the judge has discretion to select the charitable recipient of the unclaimed funds, she may select her alma mater or another favored charity, thereby creating an appearance of impropriety.
To minimize over-reliance on cy pres distributions and to tailor them to serve the best interests of the class, the Article makes four pragmatic recommendations. First, to align the interests of class counsel and the class, courts should presumptively reduce attorneys’ fees in cases in which cy pres distributions are made. Second, to ensure that class members and courts have the information they need to assess the fairness of a settlement that contemplates a cy pres distribution, class counsel should be required to make a series of disclosures when it presents the settlement for judicial approval. Third, to inject an element of adversarial conflict into the fairness hearing and to ensure that the court receives the information needed to scrutinize the proposed cy pres distribution, the court should appoint a devil’s advocate to oppose it. Finally, the court should be required to make written findings in connection with its review of any class action settlement that contemplates a cy pres distribution.
The first two proposals are arguments we make regularly; the second two are matters for a rule-making body or legislature, but are not going to be enforced in the absence of class action objectors; similar protections for class members in coupon settlements are routinely ignored.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Opening brief in Pearson v. NBTY, Inc., No. 14-1198 (7th Cir.)

In a settlement of several class actions over the labeling of glucosamine supplements, class counsel settled for a claims process that paid the class under $900,000, and token injunctive relief that tweaked the labels, while leaving much of the supposedly fraudulent labeling language in place (and precluding class members from ever suing on that language again). For this, class counsel asked for $4.5 million, claiming that the settlement was really worth tens of millions because 4.7 million class members could have made $3 claims. (In reality, the postcards mailed to ascertainable class members failed to inform them that they were actually class members, and the claims process demanded they provide receipts or other information already in the defendants' possession. Little wonder no money was actually distributed to the class.) Defendant NBTY was really only on the hook for $2 million, of which $1.1 million went to cy pres, though it would have been possible to distribute that money to class members.

To top it all off, the fee request was subject to a clear-sailing clause and reversion to the defendant, the sort of self-serving fee-protection clauses condemned in our Bluetooth victory.

As a class member, I objected, represented by CCAF attorney Melissa Holyoak. The district court approved the settlement, but partially agreed with us that the fee request was excessive, knocking the Rule 23(h) award down to $1.9 million.

We've appealed: we don't think that the Rule 23(e) and Rule 23(h) fairness inquiries are to be done sequentially. NBTY put $6.5 million on the table; class counsel structured the settlement so the class got only a tiny fraction of that money, and ended up costing the class $2.6 million when their excessive fee request reverted to the defendant. We filed our opening brief last week. Because this settlement has so many of the features of bad settlements we object to, it is perhaps the best 13,000-word summary of CCAF philosophy.

Entertainingly, class counsel has cross-appealed: not satisfied with their abusive $1.9 million fee, they want the full $4.5 million.

The case is Pearson v. NBTY, Inc., No. 14-1198 (7th Cir.).

Monday, April 7, 2014

In re Apple MagSafe Power Adapter Litigation oral argument in the Ninth Circuit Tuesday

Class counsel collected $3.1 million in the Apple MagSafe Power Adapter Litigation, but their putative clients received less than $900,000, and perhaps even less than $500,000—the district court never bothered to make findings. The settlement was structured to pay the attorneys double their lodestar but make it difficult for class members to make claims, and few of them did. We represent objector Marie Newhouse, who received $0 under the settlement, and appeals the approval of the self-dealing settlement and the district court's imposition of a punitive appeal bond. We've also moved for sanctions in response to class counsel Mehri & Skalet's Rule 28(j) letter that claimed Newhouse had never made an argument that was in her first issue presented.


The oral argument will be webcast live starting sometime between 10:15 and 11 am Pacific time Tuesday on the San Francisco Courtroom 1 camera; the link will be on the front page of the Ninth Circuit website, and we'll update this post with a link to the podcast of the argument after the Ninth puts it on the site.

Update: oral argument is online.