AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion is a case in which the Supreme Court has granted Corporations the right to use fine print in contracts to basically negate the ability to bring class action suits against Corporations in favor of required adjudication by paid arbitrators. The ruling will have a profound impact on the ability of claimants to seek redress for being defrauded by Corporations. Presumably, each individual victim will have to file his own lawsuit in order to seek redress.

http://www.workplaceclassaction.com/class-certification/att-mobility-v-concepcion---what-the-supreme-courts-april-27-ruling-means-for-employers/

Sounds like a win for consumers since the lawyers in class action lawsuits take the lions share of winnings leaving scraps for those victimized by corporations.

Now, does that make any sense? With a class action suit, the attorneys take 30% of the awards for thousands of claimants. With this new law, attorneys take 30% of the awards for the very few who decide to sue. Doesn't sound like a win for consumers to me. Not very well thought out.

Remember when the tobacco companies were sued in a "class action suit"? there 5 attorneys I believe and each one made something like $300 million on a $2 billion suit leaving 3/4 of a billion for all the plaintiffs to share.

nobody is forcing anyone to sign a contract... read before you sign

So, your beef is that the attorneys' fees were about 15% of the award. That doesn't sound like a bad fee for professional services of this importance. Imagine how it would have been if all those plaintiffs had had to sue as individuals.

15%? they took 1.25 billion of 2 billion and left $750 million for the plaintiffs. This is why suing as an individual would be better, each state has their own laws for example Arizona attorneys can only ask for 1/3 of the award.

Mis-read your post.

Well, you may be right. I'm certainly in favor of seeing proper damages reach the highest number of victims as possible.

Me too and that's why I think this might benefit victims of scrupulous business practices. I would like to see individuals be able to negotiate contracts with businesses.

These types of lawsuits are what piss people off..

These people sued AT&T because they were charged sales tax on a free phone upgrade..

I mean... Lets be serious..

The fact is AT&T offers arbitration in cases like this and its free to the customer as well as usually ending with AT&T making amends..


You can blame the idiots that sued because they didn't want to pay $20 in state sales tax..

I didn't know that. I don't think I would want to have my case decided by an arbitrator who is paid by the company I am suing. That wouldn't seem very smart to me.

Smart business move. Pay off the few dozen people who notice that they were cheated and complain While retaining the $20 X millions of people who never complain. Just the cost of doing business. The magic of the marketplace.

. I don't think people file lawsuits because they want to make everybody feel good. I think it's OK to piss people off if that's what it takes to get justice. The courts get to decide what justice is, not individuals with a political axe to grind.

So if I walk in a store and the price tag says $4.99 and doesn't say in big letters that I am also required to pay sales tax I can sue the retailer because they used a deceptive price practice?

We can all tie up the court system for decades..

And its not like the states need any more tax revenue..

I think you just might be onto something..

your math would be correct but that doesn't mean it's a good deal for members of a class action. what most often happens in a class action is that the corporation settles for pennies on the dollar and the many people in the class get pennies and all those pennies work out to be millions for the attorneys. and a good percentage of those in the class likely would have had their individual case tossed as frivolous.

the court is obviously seeing a need for tort reform as many americans do. now perhaps the congress will get with it.

Your sarcasm aside, that's not really the topic of this thread. The decision did not address the merits of the case. It had nothing to do with whether States get more of less tax revenues. (Personally, I think a small-print disclaimer "Local sales taxes apply" would have kept everybody out of trouble. Would that have been so hard)?

As for "tying up the courts", It is a common cry among the proponents of entities that don't want to get sued that "frivolous" lawsuits clog the courts. There is no evidence that this is the case. Truly frivolous lawsuits are easily dismissed. The courts are there for a reason. There is no rule that says "these people are entitled to use the courts, but these people are not entitled to".

the controversy over tort reform is not, or at least should not be over damages. No reasonable person can argue that people should not be entitled to collect for damages. The controversy is almost entirely over punitive damages. I can argue over that at length. I think that tort reform would cause much more harm to siciety than good.

no the controversy is not over damages, punitive or otherwise. the controversy is over tort. hence the term "tort reform". the basic business model of an attorney firm that specializes in tort law involves finding a crusade, take asbestous as an example, lining up millions of plaintiffs, who may or may not have been harmed, convince them in dollar amounts how much they've been damaged but taking great pains to make no promises of what each of them might expect much less offering examples of the pennies on the dollars other class action plaintives typically recieve, all the time knowing full well that no large corporation in their right mind will let the matter go to court. the class action settles out of court, the tort attornies reap millions in fees and the clients most offten walk away wishing they'd never bothered.


yes absolutely people are entitled to recover damages, even punitive damages, and we have a court system to insure that happens when the case merits. but extremely few class actions ever get to the court system. instead, "reasonable" damages are decided upon by tort and corporate lawyers and the typical award to each plaintiff is far from what any of them consider reasonable.

This is new to me. I hadn't heard or read that before. All the arguments for tort-reform that I had ever heard about focused on limiting the size of damages awards

nope. tort reform envolves tort practices. name one class action where the individual plaintiffs were awarded overly large damages. tort is one thing. outrageous dammages are quite another. that many people connect the two is a shame because nobody other than the lawyers win with the tort system as it is now. it's simply a matter of advertising to line up millions of plaintiffs to file for damages the tort attornies knowing full well that the case will never be heard by a jury of their peers.

Off topic. Heard a new lawyer joke I liked
;
A jew, a hindu and a lawyer. need to find a place to sleep for the night, The farmer says, "I can put two of you up in the house. one of you will have to sleep ing the barn." The jew volunteers, but is back knocking on the door an hour later, "I can't sleep in the barn. There are pigs there". The Hindu volunteers. Same thing. "I can't sleep in the barn. There are cows there". So, now it's the lawyer's turn. An hour later there's knocking on the door. There's all the animals. "We can't sleep in the barn . . .'

Lawyers love these lawyer jokes.

what's the diffence between a lawyer and a catfish?


one's a scum sucking bottom feeder, the other's a fish.