Victory in HP Inkjet

A 2-1 decision of the Ninth Circuit agreed with us that the district court incorrectly applied the coupon-valuation provision of the Class Action Fairness Act in the HP Inkjet case. Details (and a list of press coverage) at Point of Law. After two appellate wins in 2011, and two in 2012, this is our third in 2013, and the year isn't half over.

This week's fairness hearing on the Southwest drink voucher class action settlement raised similar issues and discussed the import of the Inkjet decision; plaintiffs' counsel there claimed that they were told by Inkjet counsel that they plan to seek en banc review. If they do, the petition would be due next week.

Update in Apple MagSafe settlement Ninth Circuit appeal

CCAF filed an opening brief in October; after many delays in the briefing schedule, we filed our reply brief in April. Details at Point of Law.

Southwest Drink Voucher objection

I've previously discussed the problems with the Southwest Drink Voucher coupon settlement, and CCAF attorney Melissa Holyoak is representing a class member objecting to the settlement.

Fraley v. Facebook

Lots of class members forwarded me their notices in this settlement, which is likely to pay the class zero; if it pays anything, it will only be because the claims process freezes out tens of millions of class members. The attorneys, however, are asking for $7.5 million.We've objected; details at Point of Law. A district court threw out an earlier version of the settlement on Bluetooth grounds; it's hard to see how this one will pass muster.

Another victory for CCAF: Pecover v. EA Sports triples class payouts

You will recall that we objected to a class action settlement over EA Sports's Madden games: as in our successful Baby Products objection, the settlement did little to ensure that class members got paid, while the attorneys would get millions regardless whether any class members received any cash. We argued that class members should get first dibs on the settlement fund before money went to unrelated third-party charities. The court agreed in part, and the parties consented to modifying the settlement to permit both a tripling of the money available to consumers, and another thirty days for consumers to make claims. Coverage of the new notice (though not the litigation that led to that tripling) at Kotaku and Consumerist. Would it be too needy to ask for some blog love?

Already, the number of claims has doubled: combined with the tripling of claim amounts, we're looking at over a 500% increase in the amount of money going to consumers. In a just world, we'd get five sixths of the gigantic attorney fee (after all, class counsel ridiculed our objection and defended the degree to which their own clients were going to be shafted), but we'll settle for making a more modest request, to be paid from the $9.2 million class counsel has argued they are due to receive, with any amounts over our lodestar to be donated to the class or the Federal Judicial Center.

In today's Wall Street Journal

Today's Wall Street Journal covers one element of the fee dispute in Citigroup Securities. More discussion at Point of Law, together with links from coverage of last week's fairness hearing.

Victory in Bayer

As a result of our objection in the Bayer class action settlement, the parties modified the settlement to increase direct payments to the class by over $5.8 million, over 25 times as much as the class would have received in the cy pres-heavy settlement had we not objected. A second objection to one of the cy pres recipients resulted in a beneficiary more aligned with the purpose of the litigation. The district court has not yet finalized its decision on the fees to be awarded to plaintiffs' counsel. We'll be seeking modest attorneys' fees to come out of class counsel's share; if we are awarded more than $50,000 (less than 1% of the additional benefit to class members), we'll cede the rest to the settlement fund.