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The point wasn't for me to get a lot of money. The point was for Equifax to lose money. Look, I'll badmouth lawyers as much as the next person, but anyone who
by danShumway 7y ago
The point wasn't for me to get a lot of money. The point was for Equifax to lose money.
Look, I'll badmouth lawyers as much as the next person, but anyone who wants to claim class actions are a mistake needs to come up with a better system before they trash this one. There are so few avenues for consumers to hold companies accountable right now. They just don't exist. And thanks to arbitration and class action bans in EULAs, even the few avenues we do have are getting gradually eroded.
So first make regulatory penalties stricter, first set up real consequences for CEOs and boards. Then we can talk about revising class actions. I'm not satisfied with someone saying, "theoretically this could be better." Make the alternative systems better first, and then we'll talk about throwing away what we currently have. Like, holy crap, how short sighted can CNBC be? There are no working alternatives in the US to class actions right now.
The tragedy isn't that the lawyers took 20% of 380 million dollars. The tragedy is that it was only 380 million dollars. I'd happily trade another 25-50% on top of the current lawyer take if they had gotten that total up to 750 million, or even a billion.
- RangerScience 7y agoLaywers get 20% of the restitution costs, on top of the restitution costs. If the courts deem that the resulting costs to the defendant are too low, additional amounts may be levied and given to relevant charities, or the ACLU (or things like it). If the company would collapse due to the costs, or otherwise would be unable to pay the full costs, executive bonuses (and potentially some pay, with limits) may be reclaimed, both towards allowing payment, and preventing failure in "too big to fail" situations. I miss anything? People get restitution. Lawyers get rewarded for quality work. Companies both pay damages, and a penalty on top of damages. Executives bear responsibility as people, not just the corporate entity.
- danShumway 7y agoOff the top of my head, I'd have no issue with this. Sounds great, particularly in how it would expand the ways we could hold executives personally responsible. The request I would make is, "can we build a real, working version of the system you propose before we get rid of the existing one?" I'm not eager to throw away what we have on the promise that we could build something great afterwards. The annoyance I feel when I read articles like this is that it's a bunch of reporters saying, "we need to do something about lawyers", and I just feel like -- if I'm in a leaky lifeboat, don't tell me to jump out of it until you have another boat next to me that I can climb into. We all know the lifeboat has leaks, but this lifeboat is real, and yours is (at least for now) imaginary.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI don't think anyone here is proposing we get rid of class action lawsuits. People are annoyed because they think the class action isn't enough.