Law Prof Characterizes Yahoo Suit as Extortion

netbuzz writes "Fair comment or libel? A law prof/blogger calls those behind the class-action suit against Yahoo 'extortionists.' The targeted lawyers, who include spyware/adware expert Ben Edelman, are not amused." From the article: "Goldman, who according to his blog 'holds leadership positions in the American Bar Association and the Computer Law Association,' addresses the merits of the suit in a generally academic fashion before winding up for the big finish: 'I think these lawsuits are nothing more than a shakedown for cash,' he concludes. 'Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend, so the plaintiffs' lawyers can exploit those defense costs for their personal largesse. They can make this argument to defendants: settle with me for a fraction of your total expected defense costs, and we're both better off (defendants save some defense costs, plaintiffs' lawyers grab some personal loot).'"

Comments

Yahoo! is run by yahoos?

[fragmentate]

I don't think of Yahoo! as a technology company having worked with their "development team". They're a second-rate hack, at best. We have submitted YSS feeds to them and had them rejected with various problems. We would then wait 2 hours, and resubmit the feed, unchanged...

The feed is then accepted.

We also manage keyword buys. We'll submit a list of keywords, for example, "baby jump suits" -- to have it rejected (without notifying us -- we have to discover it after-the-fact). The word that actually goes in is "baby jump suit". The next time we submit, "baby jump suits" goes in... Clearly subjective, depending on which hack approved the submission.

One can deduce that their approval process is manual. That means they probably have a bunch of $10/hr. hacks doing the grunt work. It's inconsistant.

I digress...

My point is that if you have people instead of systems, algorithms, and/or applications to do the tedious work, you have:

• Human error.
• Human cheating.
• Disinterest.

I don't think Yahoo! the corporate entity is aware of these goings-on. But given the clear inconsistancies that make Yahoo! difficult to work with, I think they're accountable nonetheless.

At the same time, if someone on a boat isn't helping keep it affloat, you don't sink the boat. So, in spite of Yahoo! needing to be slapped -- I'd rather see them slapped with a dose of "hey your products suck" than a bunch of lawsuits by money-grubbing lawyers.

The Horror

[Umbral Blot]

Lawsuits filed solely to make money, banish the thought. Who would do such a despicable thing? Seriously though, I am glad someone is speaking out about this practice in the yahoo case, but really something should be done within the legal system to fix the problem as a whole, not just this symptom. One possible solution would be to have lawyers on both sides be paid a fixed rate by the state, which would fix some inequalities, although admittedly individual people might still be motivated by money to sue.

Huh?

[Coleco]

Oh I though that's how lawsuits worked. Always.

Justice

[McGiraf]

It's seem that justice is no more a thing to keep society to a certain standard and give everybody a nice and predictable place to live. It's just a bussiness now, like fast food and diaper manufacturing.

Class-action fix

[overshoot]

One possible solution would be to have lawyers on both sides be paid a fixed rate by the state, which would fix some inequalities, although admittedly individual people might still be motivated by money to sue.

If you want to see some real panic in the class-action racket, try this:

Counsel for the plaintiffs in a class-action suit may not receive any more than is actually distributed to the plaintiffs.

That's the classic scam: the defendents settle for $100 million, the plaintiffs' law firm get $95 million of it, $5 million is offered to the plaintiff class if they respond to request 20 pages of paperwork to apply for their $0.75 payout; a total of $120 thousand is actually distributed to the plaintiff class members and "their" lawyers pocket the balance.

Suggest it to your Congresscritters. The ABA and Trial Lawyers' Association will hate it, but if it ever sees daylight nobody will dare vote against it because (unlike a lot of tort reform) it doesn't take a dime from plaintiffs -- the ones they ABA and TLA use to justify their normal way of doing business.

Loser pays should be the way

[vodkamattvt]

This is another reason why we need reform in litigation, especially in a litigation prone society such as the US. Loser pays attorney fees for the winner, problem solved.

Yes, I am aware there are problems with this also (loser can't pay, etc). But it is definately a start.

Re:Why?

[overshoot]

Assuming for a second that the quoted individual isn't full of it, why are any unmeritorious lawsuits expensive to defend? Don't courts do things like order one party to pay the other's legal fees in cases like that?

He's not, they are, and the court's don't.

The main reason is that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure #10 is basically a dead letter.

• "Professional courtesy" means that other lawyers won't accuse an abuser of being abusive because the rest of the legal community will retaliate. Nobody likes a snitch.
• The Court won't because it just means more work, and they're too busy as it is. Besides, the Court of Appeals will probably reverse anyway.
• For a suit to be legally frivolous requires that a whole bunch of lawyers decide that there was no conceivable way that there was the slightest shred of argument to support it. Gimme a break! These are lawyers -- their training, their whole point in existence, is finding something to argue about.

He has phrased it as an opinion

[Bourbon Man]

He made sure he could claim this as opinion. "I think these lawsuits are...." "I see this lawsuit as..." "I see that process as..." These are fairly obvious opinion statements, not statements of fact. If they were meant as statements of fact, he would not have prefaced them with "I think" and "I see". Instead they would read "These are..." "That is..." etc.