Some updates

• Yesterday, we filed the opening brief in our HP Inkjet Ninth Circuit appeal. Details at Point of Law.

• The district court approved the $0 settlement in Pampers. The attorneys will receive $2.7 million. We've appealed to the Sixth Circuit.

• The district court approved the Brazil v. Dell settlement. There have been about $0.5 million of claims, and the attorneys are to receive $6 million. We're going to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, since this pretty clearly contradicts Bluetooth. Thanks to Kyle Graham for covering the fairness hearing.

• The plaintiffs have asked for a $200,000 appeal bond in Blessing v. Sirius XM, the case we've appealed to the Second Circuit where the attorneys got $13 million and the class got worthless coupons that the court refused to call coupons. We filed an opposition to the motion for appeal bond. The motion is entertaining: the plaintiffs complain that I've previously objected in several other cases, but if you look at their list, we won most of those objections. 

• Blogosphere coverage of yesterday's Wall Street Journal article: Ribstein; Overlawyered; Mass Tort Litigation Blog; WSJ Law Blog.

• Business Law Daily covers the CEI amicus in Cobell v. Salazar.

Welcome, Wall Street Journal readers

Welcome to those of you who found this page after reading the Wall Street Journal profile. The Journal also discussed our Sirius XM objection. Other articles about CCAF can be found on my personal website. Join our Facebook page to stay updated on what we're up to. (Later today, I'll be posting our Ninth Circuit brief on the HP Inkjet printer coupon settlement, where the attorneys got $2.1 million, and the class got coupons only usable at HP.com—which charges far more than other Internet vendors, making it more expensive to use the coupons than not to use the coupons.)

I should note the story does not give enough credit to the attorneys working with me; for example, Frank Bednarz (now a much better-paid patent litigator in BigLaw) argued the Honda case, and Dan Greenberg argued the West Publishing, Kellogg, and Hertz cases. Adam Schulman, a 2010 Georgetown Law grad, just got his first district-court argument a month ago in the Pampers case, which, after a district-court approval, will generate an interesting Sixth Circuit appeal on the scope of Rule 23(b)(2) and the permissibility of big attorney-fee awards in $0 settlements.

Franklin Templeton mutual fund settlement

The attorneys have asked the court to approve a settlement that would give the attorneys $2.142 million and the class $2.27 million. (Good luck finding out that information anywhere on the settlement website.) This violates the plain language of the PSLRA; Fred and Fran Smith have objected, and I have agreed to represent them at the fairness hearing in Baltimore October 25.

In this case, as in so many PSLRA settlements, the parties have structured notice so that there is next to no way for most class members to have time to object. I'm interesting in hearing from people who get postcards or other mailings about bad class action settlements that arrive less than a week before (or, often after) the objection deadline.

Brazil v. Dell

The class attorneys in Brazil v. Dell are asking for $6 million for themselves, but it is a claims-made settlement that will almost certainly pay a small fraction of that amount to the class. The parties are attempting to hide that from the court by scheduling the claims deadline after the fairness hearing, but this is where objectors come into play, and the Center has filed an objection on behalf of a class member in advance of the October fairness hearing. The settlement also suffers from several of the self-serving features identified as problematic in Bluetooth.

Pampers Dry Max class action settlement objection

This week, we objected to a $0 settlement of the Pampers Dry Max class action that proposes paying $2.7 million to the lawyers. More details at Point of Law. Adam Schulman will argue at the fairness hearing in federal court in Cincinnati next month.

Sirius XM settlement approved

Judge Baer approved the $0 Blessing v. Sirius XM settlement and $13 million fee award yesterday. The decision contradicts (and ignores) Bluetooth, Aqua Dots, and the Class Action Fairness Act (which applies to "coupons" and not just "coupons 'to purchase something [class members] might not otherwise purchase'"), and applied the wrong standard of law in creating an essentially irrebuttable presumption of fairness for the settlement. So we'll have an interesting appeal to the Second Circuit, which will either have to reverse or create a circuit split.

Classmates.com class action settlement (again)

I'm getting lots of emails about the Classmates.com class action settlement notice. We're aware of it, because we're already in the case: we earlier successfully objected to the first version of the settlement where the attorneys were asking for $1.05 million while the class received only $117,000. The new settlement is certainly improved—$2.5 million is better than $117,000, though it still reflects a nuisance settlement—but, as many of you of noted, the fees are excessive (and violate Bluetooth standards). We'll be objecting again.