hi, i rarely read my bill inserts but i was surprised to see this:

the first two pages describe the class action against comcast for throttling back bandwidth for bittorrent traffic.

the third page describes how they are hiking up rates to defray their losses for paying out for the lawsuit.

so i guess there are no real winners...

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Sure there are. The lawyers always win.

If I had my way they'd change class action lawsuits so that the lawyers only got the same payment as the least member of the class. If lawyers had to get paid $1.12 for their work they wouldn't be quite as eager to jump on class actions.

Heck I had stock in a company where a class action lawsuit was filed due to a merger (actually a takeover by private equity firm). Reading the settlement would have been funny if it weren't so sad. Essentially the lawyers for the class agreed that there probably wasn't any malfeasance so agreed to settle for their fees. That is to say only the lawyers and not their "class" of clients got anything. Of course the fees ran into quite a bit of money. If the rule I'd suggested above were in place they'd never have made that settlement (or more likely never have sought class action status in the first place).

and of course comcast doesnt throttle bittorrent traffic anymore they just impose bandwidth caps

An incredibly ignorant position. Corporations are in a position to rip off ten million people for a dollar each. Where is the incentive in your position to stop that practice? Paying a lawyer one dollar?

Why should the corporations be allowed to use their positions in such a manner?

You want to be a corporate shill all your life, fine, but at least you could come up with a practical alternative for stopping corporations from abusing their positions before you slam the present system.

Does the present system have a cost? Of course. Every system gives off heat, as it were. What is your alternative?

Years ago, I lived in a community where, so I am told, an industrial cleaning compound was detected in trace amounts in ground water eight hundred feet below my property. Which apparently made me part of a class action.

Many years and tens of millions of dollars later, the suit was finally settled, and I got my share. Forty-eight bucks. But the lawyers made millions.

Calling someone ignorant because they don't agree with YOUR point of view shows you are both egotistical and rude. If you'd like to make a point make one.

I certainly agree that corporations should be held accountable but my point was that they are NOT being held accountable when all they end up paying is pennies to every member of the class and only the lawyers get the money. What if instead the lawyers actually acted for the class they supposedly represented and forced the corporation to pay each class member an amount of money equal to the amount of the transgression they made PLUS a penalty? One such lawsuit of that sort being one won by the plaintiffs would change the whole way greedy corporate bastards act when making decisions purely based on profit rather than human standards.
Better yet rather than suing corporations when people die why not arrest the officers and try them for murder?

If you think a couple of million paid to scumbag lawyers after having earned 100 million or more is a deterrent for corporate malfeasance then you my friend are more naive than you'd like to think I am.

And where do you think these no-compromise cases you propose are going to settle at? Proving individual damages is incredibly expensive, so paying each class member "an amount equal to the amount of the transgression" is impossible. The person who had trace amounts of a chemical 800 feet below his property probably had less than $48 in damage. Certainly less than the person whose drinking well was tainted.

Hence there is often a sliding scale for damage awards and the ability to opt out of class actions.

As for "penalties," those are called "punitive damages," and they are frequently asked ("prayed" in legal parlence) for. Good luck proving punitives, however, as the bar to getting an award of them is quite high. You also have a nonsensical US Supreme Court position that limits punitive damages to a multiple of actual damages.

So unless you want to do away with standards of evidence and proof of damages, and have lawsuits in court even longer than they are now, what you have is the present system.

You also have the problem of settlements usually requiring remedial action and changes to the policies and procedures of the corporations in question. That's where the real remedy lies.

As for forcing corporate officers to go to jail, they do if they were personally criminally liable. General negligence and we-don't-care attitudes, however, are not criminal acts. So while sending corporate officers to jail on general principles has a certain visceral appeal to all (including me), it's a non-starter.

The only fail-safe for a lack of government creation and enforcement of appropriate rules and regulations is the individual system of class-action lawsuits.

I don't mind somebody disagreeing with me. I mind somebody advancing a solution that shows no understanding whatsoever of the social system in question.

Good reading: King of Torts by John Grisham.

The book is fiction of course and is just nice to read.

Back to reality, I don't think it will ever be possible to give a good answer whether or not these practices are good or bad. If 100.000 people have damages, and as a result of a lawsuit they receive $100 each, you can be pretty sure that the lawyers receive something in the range of $3.000.000. That doesn't look fair as compared to the money one individual receive, but then again without this action no one would have received a penny as it is virtually impossible to group 100.000 individuals to file a claim and then hire a lawyer for a modest (hahaha) fee of $400,-/hour. When a company really causes damage to individuals, each individual might not receive a vast amount of money, however a company having to pay $13.000.000 as in the example above might think twice before they cheat on their customers again, which is undoubtedly in the interest of current an future customers. On the other hand I do believe greedy lawyers exist who's only interest is to gain as much money as possible, file unnecessary cases, damage otherwise fair operating companies, and have no interest in compensation for the customers whatsoever.

jlinkels

Sure there are. The system minimizes that (although it does exist) in a few ways:

1. Filing and maintaining a class action is an expensive proposition. If the lawyer doesn't have a reasonably good fist of a case, then he's out money up front without payback. Note the self-limitation in that: "reasonably good fist of a case" In other words, he's got to be able to prove a fairly extensive total damages or it makes no economic sense to begin with.

2. Proof of liability. In short, not just that damages occurred, but that this particular company caused the damages.

3. Sanctions. Bozo lawyers get shut down for filing frivolous suits, and often have to pay the attorney's fees of the defendant corporations.

4. Being the pioneer. Remember the Ford Pinto and its exploding gas tank? Lots of people do. What people don't remember is that the first 50 or so cases against Ford for Pinto explosions were lost. These were good cases with good lawyers and real damages, and the people lost. Because Ford, in those early cases, could say "one accident doesn't prove a design flaw" or "we can explain," or "it was a fluke." Guess what? Those lawyers were working on contingency, and 30 or 40 percent of zero is _________ (fill in the blank).

It was only after those first 50 or so cases that people started saying that no, Ford couldn't explain and wave it off, these simply couldn't be flukes, and courts and engineers started seriously looking into design flaws.

You also have the small matter that Ford KNEW it had a problem (design flaw) on day one, lied and concealed the truth from the courts, including deliberately withholding documents proving its culpability, getting sanctioned millions in the process (but only after many, many cases had been lost by victims) when the truth came out.

But guess what motivated ALL of those lawyers? That's right; a big, fat, check representing 40 percent of the jury's award after the lawyer has lopped off the expenses of the case from the top.

Should Ford have acted differently? Sure, but in Ford's defense, Ford performed a cost/benefit analysis, and the cost of paying off burn victims was cheaper than the cost of making the cars not blow up in the first place. In and of itself, that is rational, and if we want to say that no, such damages are not appropriate for cost benefit analysis, then government regulation to that effect is called for. Where Ford went wrong was in lying and otherwise corrupting the integrity of the legal system. Ford also got taught a lesson, and the values it used in its spreadsheets for cost benefit analysis were changed.

Is there a single computer administrator or user who does not use a cost/benefit analysis in approaching computer management, even though doing so does expose people to risk? Shall we throw them in jail too?

Much as I appreciate the appeal of slamming our legal system, someone will have to come up with a system that actually reins in corporate (and personal) behavior before we do away with the lawyers.

And if anybody wants to disagree with that, I invite them to go buy a Pinto.

it took over a year but attached is my bill with my settlement amount; i got a cool $16 (what should i spend it on) ?

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I am shocked you got that much. We were part of one that netted use $4.16

You can send me that amount. I am not proud.

This is why you don't bother, because you're only gonna waste money on a lawyer.

test

What you can do is inform others and boycott the company ... and if people understand and listen, they will change or go bankrupt. Obviously, people today are sheep, so just forget about it.