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.

CCAF wins in Ninth Circuit

WASHINGTON, DC - The Center for Class Action Fairness LLC announced today its victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit objecting to a valueless class action settlement. On Friday, the appellate court vacated a district court's 2009 approval of a settlement of a lawsuit alleging that Bluetooth headset manufacturers committed fraud when they failed to give more prominent warnings that listening to headsets continually at loud volumes might cause hearing damage. (A similar class action over Apple iPods was dismissed.) The settlement would have provided no cash to the class, but $850,000 to the attorneys. The Center believes that this is the first time the Ninth Circuit has vacated approval of a class action settlement since 2003.

"This is a landmark decision," said Ted Frank, the founder of CCAF who argued the appeal. "The Court explicitly upheld the principle that the absence of explicit collusion is not enough for a court to approve a settlement when the attorneys have negotiated a self-serving settlement at the expense of their clients. It is important because the Court identified as problematic several tactics attorneys use to protect proposed fee awards from scrutiny such as 'clear sailing' clauses that prohibit defendants from challenging proposed fee awards and 'kickers' that preclude the class from receiving any reduction in the fee award. The decision further emphasizes that any fee request based on 'lodestar' rates has to be cross-checked against benefits actually received by the class. It will now be much more difficult for attorneys to abuse the class action system to negotiate low-value settlements that provide handsome compensation for themselves."

The case is In re Bluetooth Headset Products Liability Litigation, No. 09-56683.


The Center for Class Action Fairness, founded in 2009, is a not-for-profit program that provides pro bono representation to consumers and shareholders aggrieved by class action attorneys who negotiate settlements that benefit themselves at the expense of their putative clients. It has won millions of dollars for class members over the last two years.

Coverage: Forbes, Point of Law, NLJ, Law 360 ($), Business Law Daily, LNL, Lawyers USA Online, Toothman, Trial Insider.