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I've received $20.43 from the Perkins v. LinkedIn class action settlement. Personally, it's not about the money, but rather about trying to hold companies accou

I've received $20.43 from the Perkins v. LinkedIn class action settlement. Personally, it's not about the money, but rather about trying to hold companies accountable for their actions. (http://www.addconnectionssettlement.com/ http://www.addconnectionssettlement.com/)

YCode 9y ago
Exactly. People complain about how the lawyers who managed the case (sometimes for years!) take most of the payout, but so long as the company's risk/reward math is tipped towards the safety of their customers I have no issue with not seeing much of the settlement.
- stult 9y ago
  >the lawyers who managed the case (sometimes for years!) take most of the payout This meme is part of the problem. The lawyers take maybe a third of the settlement, after bearing most of the costs of litigation themselves, which they would still bear if they lost. It's high risk/high reward. Lowering the reward just means no lawyer will take the case.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Quibbling over "most" is beside the point. There is a real issue where the incentives for the lawyers don't line up well with the interests of the class. The lawyers likely do pretty well if they settle a huge case for tens of millions and the main thing that happens for the class is they can't file a lawsuit anymore. The financial penalty for the company is better than nothing, but it often isn't all that much and often doesn't do the class any real good either.
- jwommack 9y ago
  Part of the reason that is an issue is that they're settling for much smaller amounts because the cut they get is big. So you have some massive data breach cases settled for things like $10 million. That's not even punitive at that point for companies like Target. In practice it seems it basically just winds up being a big payout for whoever actually filed.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> Personally, it's not about the money, but rather about trying to hold companies accountable for their actions. I'm not entirely certain that a class action settlement is a sufficient deterrent; do the payouts typically hurt the company enough to not take some given risk again?
banned1 9y ago
But didn't you have to provide your SSN to them? That would seem like a huge risk to give your SSN to some paralegal somewhere or some Wordpress plugin and MySQL unsecured database right?

YCode 9y ago

Exactly. People complain about how the lawyers who managed the case (sometimes for years!) take most of the payout, but so long as the company's risk/reward math is tipped towards the safety of their customers I have no issue with not seeing much of the settlement.

stult 9y ago
>the lawyers who managed the case (sometimes for years!) take most of the payout This meme is part of the problem. The lawyers take maybe a third of the settlement, after bearing most of the costs of litigation themselves, which they would still bear if they lost. It's high risk/high reward. Lowering the reward just means no lawyer will take the case.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Quibbling over "most" is beside the point. There is a real issue where the incentives for the lawyers don't line up well with the interests of the class. The lawyers likely do pretty well if they settle a huge case for tens of millions and the main thing that happens for the class is they can't file a lawsuit anymore. The financial penalty for the company is better than nothing, but it often isn't all that much and often doesn't do the class any real good either.
jwommack 9y ago
Part of the reason that is an issue is that they're settling for much smaller amounts because the cut they get is big. So you have some massive data breach cases settled for things like $10 million. That's not even punitive at that point for companies like Target. In practice it seems it basically just winds up being a big payout for whoever actually filed.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> Personally, it's not about the money, but rather about trying to hold companies accountable for their actions. I'm not entirely certain that a class action settlement is a sufficient deterrent; do the payouts typically hurt the company enough to not take some given risk again?

banned1 9y ago

But didn't you have to provide your SSN to them? That would seem like a huge risk to give your SSN to some paralegal somewhere or some Wordpress plugin and MySQL unsecured database right?