Class Action Suit Goodies Await Tech Users

jfruh writes "Did you buy an Acer laptop with Vista and less than 1 GB of RAM? The company has a thumb drive it would like to send you. Did you get an unwanted text from Papa John's? The company would like to make it up with you with $50 worth of free pizza. These and other little rewards are available as a result of class action lawsuits that have wound their ways through the court systems and now, years later, are paying off for very large groups of tech users." I wonder how many USB drives the lawyers took as their share.

Comments

Reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

These aren't the results of judgments, they're the rewards for settlements. So if you ever wondered why the end result is so awful it's because the actual money goes to the lawyers while the people for which the lawsuit was intended to provide justice get cheap plastic kazoos. This is supposed to be okay, though, because "class action lawsuits are intended to punish companies, not restore damages." The best part is that by accepting your cheap plastic kazoo you're also signing away any other legal recourse you may have had.

Re:Reminder

[fast turtle]

it's called small claims court and the chance of winning is far better they you'd think. I'll take $250 dollars - depends on the state - EG California now allows $2500 for spam and such per incident. Now if we'd all simply take advantage of these laws and start collecting from the most egregarious offenders.

Re:Reminder

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I had a run in with small claims years ago just after I graduated from college. The insurance company didn't want to pay anywhere near the fair market value of a vehicle that was totaled as determined by various objective not involved 3rd parties (NADA, KBB, and an independent appraisal). I paid my $35 filing fee which you could as part of your requested damages. The car sat in storage with the insurance company for 6 months as they stone walled me and I went to court. I went in with a stack of paper to prove my point that included:
The KBB value of the car
The NADA value of the car
The independent appraisers valuation of the car
Examples of very similar cars and their asking price with pictures they were all in really bad condition and/or had really high mileages even by my standards with one having 750,000+ miles on it
Examples of the same vehicle in the price range the insurance company was claiming my vehicle was worth
The data and method the insurance company used to come up with a valuation

I presented my stuff and picked apart their valuation making sure to point out where they had deducted things multiple times. The judge then asked the insurance company to justify their valuation in which they presented their method and data that I had presented. The judge looked at the insurance company lawyer and told them they should have just settled as what I was asking was perfectly reasonable. The whole court proceeding took about half an hour. After that the insurance company still stalled on getting me my money and I had to threaten to get a lien against their assets as I had a court order to have my money by a certain date which had passed and I was now legally allowed to do so and if I didn't have my check by the end of the day I would be doing that. About an hour later my check was hand delivered. In the end they ended up paying the fair market value of the car, storage for 6 months, what ever it cost to have someone go to court, what ever it cost to prepare for court, and what ever it cost to have someone hand deliver a check to me when it should have only cost them the fair market value of the vehicle.

More people need to put the screws to companies like this and things would get better quick because what ever it costs you in your time it will cost the company more. If a kid just out of college can force a big insurance company to pony up just about anyone can.