Urban Active Fitness class action settlement

The class in Gascho v. Global Fitness Holdings LLC, Case No. 2:11-cv-436 (S.D. Ohio), consists of the 606,246 individuals who signed a gym membership or personal training contract with Urban Active Fitness between January 1, 2006 and October 26, 2012. You might be one of the people who received a postcard.

The fact that the parties can identify the number with specificity suggests that a settlement is simple: give money to the allegedly injured class members. But instead one must make a claim (by mail or by the settlement website, www.urbanactivelawsuit.com). The reasoning for that is simple: class counsel would rather that the money to go to settle the lawsuit go to themselves and their friends, the settlement administrator company, rather than the class.

Earlier this year, the Sixth Circuit in In re Dry Max Pampers Litigation condemned sham settlements that allocated a disproportionate sum of money to class counsel. This settlement will pay $2.4 million to class counsel (from a segregated fund that reverts to the defendant) and, most likely, only $1.3 million to the putative clients—exactly the sort of thing the Sixth Circuit said was impermissible.

One hopes that a class member who received a postcard investigates the unfairness of the settlement and retains qualified counsel to object. The claims deadline and the objection deadline is December 30.

November 4 Press Release

US SUPREME COURT DENIES FACEBOOK USERS

CY PRES SETTLEMENT CHALLENGE OPPORTUNITY

OPENS DOOR FOR FUTURE CHALLENGES

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has declined to hear arguments in Marek v. Lane, (No. 13-136) a case challenging the fairness, reasonableness and adequacy of a $6.5 million cy pres settlement where the only concession Facebook made to settle the claims of millions of users was to establish a new foundation to educate the public about “user control” over Internet privacy.

However, in a separate statement, Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged the need for the Court to address the increasing use of cy pres settlements. He wrote, “…review of this case might not have afforded the Court an opportunity to address more fundamental concerns surrounding the use of such remedies in class action litigation, including when, if ever, such relief should be considered….In a suitable case this Court may need to clarify the limits on the use of such remedies.”

“We’re hopeful the Court in a future case will address abuse of the cy pres doctrine which has become an increasingly serious problem that cheats consumers of fair settlements in class action cases,” said Ted Frank, founder of the Center for Class Action Fairness and one of the lawyers challenging the Facebook settlement.

Cy pres awards in class action settlements provide awards be given to charities or foundations instead of individual consumers. According to legal scholars these awards “create the potential for conflicts of interest by ensuring that class counsel are able to reap exorbitant fees regardless of whether the absent class members are adequately compensated.”

October 15

Tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court will announce orders relating to two cert petitions we filed (with substantial and critically necessary pro bono assistance) that it considered at its October 11 conference: Martin v. Blessing (which long-time readers remember as the Sirius XM case) and Marek v. Lane (the Facebook Beacon cy pres case). Both petitions made SCOTUSblog's "Petitions We're Watching" list, which means that the experts there think that those petitions have a better than average chance of being granted--but since "average" means "less than 1%," odds are still long.

I'll be speaking at the University of Chicago Law School at lunchtime, and hope to see some readers there.

Marek v. Lane cert petition in the Wall Street Journal

In The Wall Street Journal, David Rivkin and Lee Casey write about Marek v. Lane, arguing that it's time to end class-action settlements that only reward lawyers, not plaintiffs. Earlier.

Mid-September update

• Procter & Gamble (but not the plaintiffs) filed an en banc petition seeking further review of the 2-1 decision striking down the ludicrous attorney-benefit-only settlement in Dry Max Pampers. CCAF filed its opposition yesterday.


• Similarly problematic to the Dry Max Pampers settlement is the case of Richardson v. L'Oreal, a pathetic lawsuit and settlement that seems to have forum-shopping shenanigans. CCAF attorney Adam Schulman filed an objection on behalf of a class member.


• One tactic class counsel engages in is to attempt to scare off objections with abusive discovery requests. This happened in L'Oreal, where class counsel purported to try to subpoena every attorney working for CCAF. Less than one business day after the subpoena was served and we sent this letter, class counsel withdrew all of the subpoenas. We're not scared of discovery: we follow the rules, and as Citigroup showed, class counsel almost always has something to hide. In this case, for example, it's doubtful the class representatives ever had any real input in the settlement process, and some might not even have standing; and I'd wager there's more than a colorable chance that there are documents existing where the parties agree that they don't want to be in the Ninth Circuit because of Bluetooth. But we're leanly staffed, and offensive and defensive discovery can be time-consuming and take away from the fun appellate stuff we like to do. If you're a litigator who'd like to be on our pro bono SWAT team call list the next time someone tries to play discovery games with us (subject of course to conflict checks and the like when the occasions arise), please drop me a line. We're engaging in fundraising so that we can be more aggressive with offensive discovery in future cases.


• We won $26.7 million for shareholders in the Citigroup case, but we think we can win even more on appeal. Another objector appealed anyway, so we're not adding any delay. We filed a notice of appeal yesterday. [Litigation Daily]

Korean Air and Asiana Airlines coupon settlement

At first glance, the Korean Air Passenger Settlement looks pretty good: $50 million in cash for class members. You have to dive very deep in the papers (it's nowhere in the notice) to find out that the attorneys are going to ask for $21.5 million of that cash. They justify this by valuing coupons with face value of $36 million at $36 million, but we know from the Class Action Fairness Act and In re HP Inkjet Printer Litig. that you're not allowed to do that. Tsk, tsk. (And, of course, 25% is likely excessive even if the settlement was worth $86 million, given that the lawsuit just piggybacked on a government antitrust investigation. But, of course, the court is never going to hear that unless a class member comes forward and objects, or retains counsel (perhaps pro bono counsel?) to represent them at the fairness hearing. The class consists of:

All persons and entities (excluding governmental entities, Defendants, and Defendants’ respective predecessors, subsidiaries, and affiliates) who purchased Passenger Air Transportation on [Korean Air or Asiana Airlines], or any predecessor, subsidiary, or affiliate of the Defendants, at any time during the time period January 1, 2000 through August 1, 2007. As used in this definition, “affiliates” means entities controlling, controlled by, or under common control with a Defendant [and does not include travel agents]. “Passenger Air Transportation” means passenger air transportation service purchased in the United States for flights originating in the United States and ending in the Republic of Korea (“Korea”) or flights originating in Korea and ending in the United States.

There is a claim form online if you want your cash and coupons; class members should get formal notice shortly. One of the lead class counsel is Jeff Westerman, who you might remember from his Milberg days for his role in the NVIDIA settlement bait-and-switch where he hired an expert witness to testify against letting class members recover what the settlement notice told them they'd recover. So one is skeptical when one reads in the settlement that "Korean Air and Class Counsel shall set the maximum coupon redemption value per ticket by mutual agreement."

August and September update

We've been very busy!

• In Fraley v. Facebook, the district court adopted our theory of attorneys' fees (zero value for injunctive relief and for settlement money paid to administrators); the parties, perhaps in response to our objection, upped the class-member award to $15 from $10. So a fee reduction of $2.5 to $3 million, with several million more available for the class. Not a bad day's work, and enough of an improvement that we're not going to appeal the parts of the decision the court got wrong.


• Speaking of whether class counsel should get a commission on money paid to the settlement administrator... You may recall the Ninth Circuit throwing out a bad settlement (in an opinion later modified) over Frosted Mini-Wheats that paid $800,000 to consumers, $2 million to lawyers, and some unknown figure to unknown cy pres. On remand, the parties set up a $4 million settlement fund—but $900,000 or so is earmarked for settlement administration. Is that a $4 million settlement, or is it really a $3.1 million settlement, because that's all the class can hope to get? Class counsel is "only" seeking $1 million this time, which is still disproportionate to actual class relief; meanwhile, the objectors who turned the $800,000 in class relief into over $2 million of class relief aren't being given anything. This morning, I'll be at the fairness hearing in San Diego, presenting the CCAF objection of Chicago Law professor Todd Henderson. Class counsel's main argument against us is that we're funded by the Koch brothers (not remotely true), and therefore we should be ignored. 


• We filed a cert petition appealing our Second Circuit loss in Sirius. I'll write a longer post about that, plus our amicus support.


• Another case that merits a longer post is a fascinating Eighth Circuit brief we filed last week in an appeal of a $2.6 million cy pres award.


• Speaking of bad cy pres (and bad coupon settlements), we filed our opening Ninth Circuit brief in EasySaver Rewards ($8.85 million for attorneys, $3 million for local cy pres, $225,000 and worthless coupons for the class) in July.
   
• CCAF attorney Adam Schulman filed an objection to the horrendous settlement in Berry v. LexisNexis, which is like Dry Max Pampers, but far worse, with a larger class and the attorneys asking for $5.5 million. This merits a longer post, but we were honored that a passel of very highly-paid attorneys representing a competing class action and their objectors saw fit to adopt so many of our arguments.


• In Pearson v. Target Corp., class counsel is seeking $4.5 million for a settlement over glucosamine sales likely to pay less than half of that to the class. I am a class member, and CCAF attorney Melissa Holyoke filed an objection on my behalf.


• In the Southwest Drink Voucher case, the court approved the settlement, but hasn't ruled on the attorneys' fees yet. We're deciding whether to appeal.


• Cato filed an amicus in support of our cert petition in the Facebook Beacon case.


• More press coverage than you can shake a stick at. And I did a lengthy "Liberty Law Talk" podcast with Richard Reisch about class action abuse generally.

Given that one of our attorneys is pregnant, another is getting married, and a third is moving, we're being very productive, though of course, we've had help from pro bono counsel.

CCAF in today's New York Times

The Adam Liptak article also generously cites my Congressional testimony on cy pres. Earlier: Marek v. Lane; Dry Max Pampers.

We maintain a complete set of our press coverage. Have we forgotten something? Drop us a line.

In addition, when I started doing this in 2009, I joked that there were only a dozen cases worth reading. That number is way up in 2013. We'd like to take some credit, given seven precedential appellate victories under CCAF's belt, and a number of good district-court and appellate decisions based on our litigation or on precedents we created. We've started a web page on the subject (which will be helpful for others wanting to object or design courses on the subject); happy to take suggestions if we left something important out.

We'd like to make our website a little nicer. If you have a good design sense and happen to want to provide us some pro bono web work to set us up a system that we can easily maintain, drop us a line.

Some updates

• The Ninth Circuit rejected en banc review of our victory in HP Inkjet. Here, for the record, is our successful opposition to the en banc petitions.
  
• In Wyeth Securities, the district court reduced an excessive fee request by $3,037,500. That puts CCAF over the quarter-billion-dollar mark lifetime in attorney-fee reductions or rejections in cases where we objected. I can't say I'm thrilled with the opinion, which makes a number of legal mistakes that will get used against future objectors, doesn't fairly address our objection, and says gratuitously unfair things about me, but, as I discuss at Point of Law, I'd rather a judge say mean things about me and then increase the benefit to the class than for a judge to say nice things about me and then rubber stamp a bad settlement and fee request.
  
• We'll accept praise from our peers, certainly. It's behind a paywall, but those of you with Law360 subscriptions can read a piece by Jeffrey Jacobson analyzing and praising our "impressive" track record, and warning defendants that they need to take more care in crafting class-action settlements. He's absolutely wrong about HP Inkjet, though.
  
• Speaking of good press coverage, we expect to have some good news later this week.

Sixth Circuit victory: In re Dry Max Pampers Litigation

A great opinion protecting class members against predatory attorneys. Congratulations to CCAF attorney Adam Schulman (Georgetown Law '10), who won his first appellate oral argument.

Details at Point of Law. Earlier on this blog.

Press and blog coverage: Fisher @ Forbes; Adler @ Volokh; Bloomberg; Wolfman 1; Wolfman 2; Cincinnati Business Courier; ABA Journal; WSJ Law Blog ($); Litigation Daily ($); Law360 ($). And a local tv news report that demonstrates why watching tv news makes you stupider.

Law360 also runs a lengthy thinkpiece analyzing a run of our recent cases, calling our results "impressive."

$26.7 million victory for CCAF in Citigroup Securities case

Details at Point of Law.

Our first cert petition, challenging Facebook Beacon cy pres settlement

We weren't involved in the 2-1 Lane v. Facebook cy pres decision disadvantaging consumers, and jumped at the opportunity to challenge it in the Supreme Court. On Friday (with generous pro bono work from BakerHostetler) we filed our first cert petition, and the first substantive request that the Supreme Court clarify the law of cy pres, a unique public-policy problem that both the Chamber of Commerce and Public Citizen agree upon. 

The Center has previously won such landmark cy pres decisions as In re Baby Products Antitrust Litigation and Nachshin v. AOL. I testified about the problem before a House Subcommittee in March, and will be speaking on an ABA panel on the subject in Boston in October. 

Redman v. Radio Shack

Redman v. Radio Shack Corp., No. 11-cv-06741 (N.D. Ill.) is a class action alleging a right to statutory recovery for Radio Shack's practice of printing expiration dates on credit-card receipts. The settlement provides $1M in attorneys' fees and $10 coupons to the class, without any mechanism to track redemptions required to justify such a large fee. Of course, there will be nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of claims comprising "settlement value" given the difficulty of making a claim, so the settlement also provide cy pres of leftover coupons to the Boys and Girls Club. Except Section 1712(e) of the Class Action Fairness Act explicitly prohibits the use of cy pres coupons for calculating fee awards. The settlement class is defined as

All persons who, between August 24, 2010 and November 21, 2011, paid by credit or debit card for products or services and received an electronically-printed receipt from any Store that contained the expiration date of the person's credit or debit card.

Excluded from the Settlement Class are Defendant, its officers, employees, and attorneys; transactions conducted with business credit or debit cards; and transactions made with RadioShack-branded debit or credit cards, as those cards do not contain expiration dates.

One hopes a class member aggrieved by this lawyers-first settlement will contact a non-profit attorney willing to help them object to a settlement with such an unfair and illegal fee request.

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.

Texas appellate victory for CCAF

We won the case of Kazman v. Frontier Oil, knocking out 100% of the attorneys' fees in a $0 shareholder derivative suit that made shareholders worse off because it was brought solely for the benefit of the attorneys. Details at Point of Law.

More on Citigroup Securities

I discuss continuing developments in the Citigroup Securities fee objection at Point of Law. Our objections (December, March) have attracted a lot of press coverage.

Baby Products press coverage

Lots of people are talking about Baby Products, some of whom talked to me. [Fisher @ Forbes; Legal Intelligencer; Reuters; Washington Examiner; Litigation Daily ($) (calling me "Class Action Settlement Scourge Ted Frank," which I should print up on my business cards); WSJ Law Blog ($); Star-Ledger/Bloomberg News; Debevoise; Ballard Spahr; ABA; Findlaw; Blawgletter; UCL Practitioner; Petit (who seems mad at me, but can't bring himself to accurately represent my litigation or public-policy position); Mealey's ($); Law360 ($)]

Why is Jaafar & Mahdi Law Group trying to squelch criticism of a bad class action settlement?

A class action accusing local McDonald's in Dearborn County of falsely advertising its chicken as "halal" was settled. A class member, Majed Moughni, an attorney, wrote a Facebook post complaining, inter alia:

McDonald's was going to pay $700,000 for selling "Haram" chicken sandwiches and labeling it as "Halal". The current lawyer on the case wants the the [sic] majority of the money to go to a medical center ($275,000) and a museum ($150,000), that lawyer Kassem Daklallah, wants to pocket $230,000 and the plaintiff, Ahmed Ahmed will keep $20,000. We think the money should go to you, the people who were lied to and bought and ate "Haram" chicken sandwiches, not a medical center or a museum who were not injured. ...

This seems a reasonable criticism: after all, the class is relatively small (observant Muslims who ate at the particular McDonald's restaurant), so distributing $425,000 to claimants is feasible. And, as Baby Products and the American Law Institute confirm, cy pres should be the last resort (rather than opening gambit) in a settlement. If Daklallah, his law firm, McDonald's, or their attorneys have preexisting relationships with the cy pres recipients, that would be even worse, because then the cy pres would be illusory relief. A $20,000 proposed payment to the class representative in a $0 settlement is further evidence of self-dealing.

At plaintiff's request, the Michigan state court enjoined Moughni, and forced a change to the Facebook page to put forward Ahmed's preferred view of the case. This is a scary First Amendment violation, and that the court signed off on it makes one wonder whether the court can fairly adjudicate objections to the settlement. Public Citizen is on the right side in this one, and, along with the ACLU, is litigating in favor of the objector's rights. [Public Citizen; Dan Fisher @ Forbes; Detroit Free Press]

(Of course, there are certainly strong arguments against using the consumer fraud laws to mediate a religious dispute. If the lawsuit reflects a disagreement over what constitutes "halal," courts shouldn't be adjudicating the religious question. If the lawsuit reflects an objectively false claim that a particular organization certified the food as "halal," then that's a legitimate complaint. But even if the possibly fatal flaw in the lawsuit means the settlement is necessarily small, that is no excuse for the attorneys, class representative, and unrelated third parties to capture the entirety of the value of the settlement.)

Public Citizen and the ACLU are taking no position on the fairness of the settlement, which makes sense for the strategic purpose of focusing on the First Amendment issues. Since we're not involved in the case, and will not be representing any clients in the Michigan proceedings, I hope that even the attorneys who negotiated this awful settlement will concede I have the right to speak about what I think is a breach of fiduciary duty to their clients.

Third Circuit win

We won reversal of the settlement approval in the Baby Products Antitrust Litigation, No. 12-1165 (3d Cir. Feb. 19, 2013). The settlement had paid $14M to the attorneys, but less than $3M to the class. The opinion isn't yet online, but I discuss it a bit at a post at Point of Law, which will be updated as events require.

In re Bayer

Fewer than 20,000 class members have bothered to go through the arduous claim procedures in the Bayer Corp. class action, which caps recovery for most of those class members at $4 unless they saved several-year-old receipts for aspirin products. The class will ultimately receive well under $500,000.

But the attorneys—led by Hagens Berman—are asking for $5.1 million for themselves. The fee is supposedly justified because about $8-$9 million will end up in the hands of cy pres recipients such as the American Heart Association. Of course, Bayer already gives money to the AHA (and the AHA returns the favor by endorsing Bayer aspirin over other brands of aspirin), so this is really just a change in accounting entries rather than any sort of class benefit.

I'm a class member and I have objected through my attorney Adam Schulman of the Center for Class Action Fairness. The case is In re Bayer Corp. Combination Aspirin Prods. Mktg. & Sales Pract. Lit., No. 09-md-2023 (BMC) (E.D.N.Y.).

Wyeth and the multiplier

Class counsel in the City of Livonia Employees' Retirement Sys. v. Wyeth case have a $3.9 million lodestar, but are seeking $16.5 million for a settlement where the class will get three cents on the dollar for their alleged damages. The Center is objecting on behalf of a client. Dan Fisher covers at Forbes in a must-read story.

CCAF in the news

• Wednesday, I argued the case of Kazman v. Frontier Oil in Houston, which raises the issue of whether Texas law permits the "deal tax": the extortionate lawsuits over merger disclosures that get settled for pricy attorneys' fees and nothing of value to the shareholders that the attorneys are supposed to be representing. Thanks to client CEI attorney Sam Kazman, and to D. Wade Carvell, who was both extraordinarily generous and effective with his pro bono time on the case. [CEI press release; Kazman podcast; earlier on POL; more on POL]
  
• West Virginia medical monitoring settlement: $6.62 million for attorneys, up to $6.58 million in funding for medical examinations for class, but the money is likely to go to charity, and there will be no free exams after 2014. I'm quoted, after the West Virginia Record called me up for my analysis.
  
• Legal Newsline covers the Southwest Airlines drink voucher class action settlement. [Legal Newsline; earlier on POL]

Southwest Airlines drink voucher coupon settlement

Southwest gives away "premium drink" (i.e., "beer") coupons worth $5 to customers who buy a Business Select ticket. Of course, not everyone drinks, and half of the coupons are thrown away. After giving out 11 million or so of these coupons, Southwest changed its policy and held that the premium drink vouchers were only good on the day of the flight for which they were sold. A class action was born, alleging bait and switch. There's a lot of publicity over the settlement; Southwest Airlines is giving away new coupons, i.e., free beer. Press coverage accepts the claim of class counsel that the coupons, which will expire in a year, and are only good in flight, are worth "perhaps more than $29 million"; papers in support of the settlement go even further and ascribe a value of up to $58 million. Thus, the attorneys will ask for $7 million. [preliminary approval order; Chi Trib; L&S; h/t LAN3]

Thing is, we know from decades of history of coupon settlements that less than $1 million of these coupons are going to get used; heck less than $1 million are likely to be claimed. The settlement is worth "perhaps more than $29 million" only in the sense that "perhaps" the atoms in the chair you are sitting on will all simultaneously shift one foot to the left. Customers are getting notified by email, but the vouchers aren't being sent to them by email. That's because Southwest wants to limit its liability, but the attorneys want to maximize their payout; they both have the incentive to exaggerate the true value of the settlement. If they told the court the settlement was worth less than $1 million to the class, the court might ask questions why a disproportionate share is reserved for the attorneys; if they asked the court to follow the strictures of the Class Action Fairness Act, which requires attorney awards to be tied to the value of redeemed coupons, the attorneys would have no chance at $7 million.

One hopes a class member sees through this misleading unfairness, and finds pro bono counsel willing to object.

 The class consists of "All Southwest customers who purchased an Eligible Drink Voucher through the purchase of a Business Select ticket or otherwise, during the time period before August 1, 2010, but who did not redeem the Eligible Drink Voucher. The Class does not include Southwest customers who obtained drink vouchers or drink coupons through the Southwest Rapid Rewards program, unless those customers separately purchased, but did not redeem, Eligible Drink Vouchers through the purchase of a Business Select ticket or otherwise." The case is In re Southwest Airlines Voucher Litigation, No. 11-cv-8176 (N.D. Ill.).

Pearce v. Acosta

A class member contacted me to complain about the settlement in Pearce v. Acosta. At first glance, it seems troubling: as described to me, the attorneys will get $425,000, and class members will get somewhere between $55,000 and $110,000. But the objection deadline is January 22, it's in Washington state court, and my attorneys and I are more than booked up between now and March with existing cases and obligations. We can't take the case, and don't have any insights beyond what's in this post; but if you're an attorney who might be interested in having this class member contact you, please E-MAIL me; leaving a blog post comment gives me no way to contact you and makes me question your judgment.

(Update: thanks to counsel who volunteered. The class member has opted out and been directed to the appropriate attorney running a parallel opt-in federal class action.)

Other December doings

In addition to the objection to the Citigroup Securities settlement, we were busy in December:

• Another bad coupon settlement: In re EasySaver Rewards Litig., No. 09-cv-2094 (S.D. Cal.). The $20 face value of the coupons is illusory, because the coupons preclude the use of the normal 20% offers on the defendant's website. Of course, the class counsel is seeking fees based on the face value; the settlement has illegal cy pres, too. We objected on behalf of a class member.
• Pecover v. Electronic Arts, Inc., No. 4:08-cv-02820 (N.D. Cal.) involves a settlement that will pay about $1 million to the class, but the attorneys are seeking $9.2 million for themselves. I'm a class member in an unfair video-game class action settlement? Of course I'm objecting!
• On December 20, the Second Circuit issued a disappointing summary order affirming the $0 Blessing v. Sirius XM settlement where the attorneys walked away with $13 million. [Reuters] We'll be filing a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc today, and are looking for pro bono Supreme Court counsel for a cert petition if the Second Circuit doesn't correct its legal error.

Southern District of New York assistance?

I've filed an objection in the Southern District of New York to an attorney-fee request that is excessive by tens of millions of dollars, and could use help in the Southern District of New York. Details at Point of Law.

Update: new postcard notice has gone out; there has been much press coverage. More details at Point of Law.