Class Action Lawsuit Insanity
June 29, 2004 – 11:44 amGoing through some paperwork recently, I ran across a settlement notice from the insurance company insuring my wireless phone (if you had a Treo 600, you would do it too). Well guess what - I get a phone card with upto 50,000 minutes (yeah right) that expires in 180 days valued at at least $5.00. The lawyers get $1,250,000 in cold hard cash (yep, that’s a million). Of course, an objection can always be filed - but then again, will anyone read it?
After doing some more calculations, I am coming up with an interesting result. There is a total of 50,000,000 minutes alloted for these phone cards at the retail value of $0.10/minute. This comes out to a total of $5 million dollars. The minimum value of each card is $5 which comes out to about 1 million potential people that will receive them. HOWEVER, if we take into account the wholesale value of phone cards which can be as low as $0.01 or $0.02, then the value of the settlement drops to somewhere between $500,000 to $1 million. Take into account that they also expire in 180 days and it looks like a very good deal for the defendands. At the same time, the lawyers are seeking $1.25 million in cash which can possible dwarf the settlement itself.
What would have made a bit more sense is alloting straight $5 million in cash among the possible 1 million people. But then again, this is our legal system.
UPDATE: I decided to submit an objection to the court. A copy in PDF format can be found here.
