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Florida Citizens' Anti-trust Payout Dwarfed By Lawyers'
According to Robin "Roblimo" Miller's article on NewsForge, Florida residents are receiving word by electronic and postal mail about the likely outcome of that state's class action suit against Microsoft (last mentioned on Slashdot last September): the upshot is that Florida residents who purchased a Microsoft operating system or Microsoft Office would be eligible for a settlement payment (in vouchers) of $5-12; the lawyers involved are seeking $48 million in fees. The settlement terms have several interesting clauses; for instance, by accepting, you would be agreeing to "settle and release all claims, demands, actions, suits, and causes of action against Microsoft and/or its directors, officers, employees, attorneys, insurers or agents, whether known or unknown, asserted or unasserted, that any member of the Florida Settlement Class ever had, could have had, now has or hereafter can, shall or may have, relating in any way to ... any conduct, act or omission that was or could have been alleged in this case as the basis for any antitrust or unfair competition claims."
The people *never* get any sort of reasonable payout from these sorts of lawsuits. I don't know why anyone even signs on. Is there a way to file suit against class action lawyers for abusing their clients?
Visit the
The plaintiffs in a class-action suit typically never outlay any of their own money. The terms of entering into an agreement are laid out and well known so I don't understand what the problem is.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
... settle and release all claims, demands, actions, suits, and causes of action against Microsoft [that they] ever had, could have had, now has or hereafter can, shall or may have.
So everyone who's involved can *never* sue Microsoft again for anything related to Anti-Trust? They take their slap on the wrist, and go laughing all the way to the bank? I guess double jeopardy could be a factor, as subsequent lawsuits would be mostly the same, but this seems to go a tad too far.
Every class action lawsuit I've ever seen has a similar restriction placed on it.
When you join the class, you relinquish your rights to sue independantly. It's a classic trade-off. By joining the class, you get an immediate pay-off, however you lose the right to sue on your own.
If you avoid joining the class, you can sue on your own, but you stand a chance of losing a great deal of money if you don't win.
Nobody's forcing you to join the class though so...
I signed up for payout from the settlement for cd price fixing. I still haven't seen a dime. I doubt I ever will. In case it hasn't become very obvious, class actions are little more than gigantic bribes to law firms.
The story mentions "Windows 3.2". There was no Windows 3.2...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
In this case, as frequently happens, the class members get effectively nothing ($12 coupons) while the lawyers pocket their share in cash -- and the class members have to actively opt out.
Sorry, I just can not see why judges allow settlements like this to go through. Like someone else said, if the class members get $12 coupons, the lawyers should get a big pile of $4 coupons.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Are you sure? I guess it was Chinese only, but technically Windows 3.2.
i guess they were expecting that microsoft would be forced to stop their anti-competitive tactics so that other products have a fair chance on the market, isn't that the _WHOLE_ point of such a lawsuit(a point which is totally lost by settling)?
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Seems to me that the real problem is that the judgements are always in terms of dollar amounts. $200 million is a big chunk of cash to almost everyone -- except Microsoft. To Microsoft, $200 million is nothing, half a percent of the amount of money they have in the bank.
Similarly, the little guys often get judgements against them that are tiny in comparison to $200 million, but which easily bankrupt them because they aren't Microsoft -- they're just normal people with normal incomes (if that).
None of this would be a problem if judgements (and settlements) were forced to be expressed in terms of the percentage of the worth of the target. An individual who is forced to pay, say, 20% of their total worth in a judgement or settlement would be hurt pretty badly by it, but they'd almost certainly survive. And the same is true of a huge entity like Microsoft. But the dollar values would be much different. $20K (for instance) against the individual, and something like $20 billion against Microsoft. But those amounts would yield roughly the same effect, and it's the effect that's important in any judgement or settlement.
The bottom line is that, in my opinion, the people who judge these settlements or who create these judgements simply don't think properly about the problem. They're focused on the amounts and not the effects.
That's to be expected in a money-driven society, I suppose...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
To accept that you are to hold them harmless for any future antitrust issues is outright illegal.
$202mil is pocket change to MS.. sad but relatively true. What happened to the "we're going to split them up"?.. Mow it's we're going to turn them into a foodstamp and software company! Next they'll be putting free coupons out in snailspam or on the side of xp boxes.. "Free mcdonalds kids meal when you buy one copy of windows xp home edition.. subject to terms and conditions, by taking this meal you waive any right to sue microsoft for anything, ever"... the last meal?
IANAL, but surely if a class action wins, that sets a handy precedent for those people wishing to sue on their own. If you can hand a lawyer a precedent, he'll take your case immediately cos he knows he's got a greater than average chance to win
In Soviet Russia, the monkey spanks you!
Can you show more than $12 in lost productivity because of microsofts trust practices? I know I can. Settlements like this are supposed to discourage monopolistic behaviour by making it unprofitable. 200 million is a drop in a very large pool, this won't affect M$ at all.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I have a great business deal for you.
You give me $10,000 and 1000 hours of work over the next 2 years. If the deal doesn't work out you get nothing. But if it does work out, I'll give you between $10,500 and $12,000 back.
Doesn't that sound great? It doesn't? Then why would you expect a lawyer to go for it? Your system means that no attorneys will take the risk, and so MS pays no penalty and the citizens of Florida don't even get their $12.
This is the same reason why I've refused to take part in any of the shareholder lawsuits that erupted as the Wall Street bubble burst. Even if successful, the lawsuit would net shareholders only a few cents on the dollar whilst netting millions for the various attorneys involved in the litigation.
First off, it is not like the people who are a part of this class can never sue MS again. They just can't sue it as part of this particular Class. As I read it, if Microsoft injures a class member in the future, he or she can sue individually or part of another different class.
Second, the settlement is misquoted and actually says "Class Counsel will seek attorneys' fees in an amount not to exceed $48 million". Not to exceed $48 mil != $48 mil. But think about it: Putting a class action suit together involving potentially millions of class members, notifying all potential parties (by placing expensive newspaper ads, sending mailing and perhaps advertising on TV), meeting with class members, explaining their rights, dealing with tons of discovery material (from class members and MS), going to court, negotiating with MS, handling stonewalling from MS, taking the malpractice liability risk of a case of this magnitude against a company like MS... yeah, I bet the fees are going to be justifiably high!
Third, yeah, 12 bucks worth of vouchers sounds sucky... but how many of these class members used Windows for four years and now expect a full refund? Cut me a break! Talk about unjust enrichment!?! Really, what kind of individual recovery do you expect for software that is worth half the cost of what MS charges for it? Enough vouchers to buy a new G5!?!
Of the million or so class members in this suit, how many are "true" Opens Source users who the minute they bought a machine, completely deleted Windows and installed *nix. They deserve a full refund, but they are better recoving it on their own instead of a Class Action suit.
John Grisham's most recent book, The King of Torts, explains a lot about the mania for class-action lawsuits lately. While it's fiction, Grisham is an attorney, so he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Class-action lawsuits are easy money for lawyers. Find a big enough "class" and you can soak the defendant for lots of money. The fees can be huge, especially if there's the typical "we get one third" sort of fee structure.
Because the lawyers are looking at huge bucks because of the sheer volume of plaintiffs, they don't necessarily care how big the individual settlements are. If you get $12, and they get $4... if the class has a million people in it, that's $4 million made without going to trial.
Anyway, it's a good book, but a scary one. I'll certainly never look at a class-action notice the same way again.
(I've been out of work for a while now, thanks to Global Crossing's bankruptcy. Slashdot won't accept links to Amazon Associate URLs in comments, but if you'd like to help me out and contribute to my book-money fund without raising your cost, you could buy the Grisham book through this URL: <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385508042 /macwhiztechnolog>)
No, not necessarily. You're mingling two very different things as though they were one and the same.
I have no argument that law firms are businesses, like any other business. But typical businesses provide a product and/or a service for a certain price, paid for by the purchaser - and that's all there is to it. They "sink or swim" purely based on the perceived usefulness and desireability of the product or service offered.
Lawyers not only do this (by billing clients their hourly fees), but stand to be handed huge sums of additional money when cases are settled, simply based on some sort of raw percentage of a total fine accessed by the court. This is why the talk of "limits on legal fees" has some validity. There's no sensible argument to make for restricting the dollar amount a lawyer is allowed to bill for his/her work, when he/she is working for a particular client.
The problem is, class-action suits are a strange beast. All of the settlement members get involved without paying any legal fees whatsoever. Then, it's practically a field day for lawyers - who could basically end up with 90% of any settlement won, making the settlement members mere pawns in the lawyers' plan to make some big cash for themselves.
The idea of class action suits was to give people collective power to deal with situations where they were wronged. Currently, it seems lawyers have turned it around into a situation where they spend some money to round up as many interested people as possible, so they can use those names as leverage to get themselves a big pay raise (and then throw those folks some token leftovers).
So what is so special about Florida? Am I right in guessing that just about any state and country can enter into the same kind of lawsuit?
So if $200M seems like a small amount of cash to Microsoft, then how about 50-100*$200M. It is starting to sound like a lot of money even to Microsoft.
Basically, the legal system should be simple enough for your average well educated layman to understand without the need for a dedicated expert. It'd be cool if the human body and the laws of physics were that simple too, but thats not something that we have any control over. The legal system we actually do. In theory.