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I don't disagree about the part that lawyers enriched ourselves, but like the librarians eating cake in Tallahassee, I don't really care about that, personally.
by geofft 7y ago
I don't disagree about the part that lawyers enriched ourselves, but like the librarians eating cake in Tallahassee, I don't really care about that, personally. I do disagree with the part about spending $800M on lawyers - if that came out of Equifax's own pocket, that would be ten times more effective at B than spending $80M. If you made them spend $8B on lawyers, Equifax might well shut down, and scare the other credit reporting agencies into behaving. That is valuable to me.
I'll be honest, as a victim, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with $125, either. I expect most people will spend it on themselves, but even spending it on credit monitoring doesn't actually fix the problem, it just makes the problem a little less bad, maybe, at the cost of enriching other companies that depend on this ecosystem of profiting off other people's data. I would genuinely prefer a settlement that cost Equifax $800M and got me nothing to one that cost $80M and got me $125.
- zamadatix 7y agoThe lawyer pool isn't "in addition to" it comes "out of" the settlement amount that was already decided previously. I.e. the difference between 80 million and 800 million in lawyer fees is exactly 720 million that was supposed to have gone to compensation going to the lawyers instead.
- geofft 7y agoOK, but the settlement was $380 million. There was no $720 million that was supposed to go to the lawyers (or to anyone else). If the lawyers had instead negotiated a settlement that got them fees of $800 million, then, because as you say the fees come out of the settlement amount, the settlement would have to be at least $800 million. That would be good for me, as a victim, because it would have meant a larger penalty to Equifax.