RIGHT TO THE CHIN

Winning The Lottery For Somebody Else: No-Class Class-Action Lawsuits

“Great, a letter from a lawyer,” I grudgingly grumbled to myself as I looked through my mail last Thursday. Sure, I expected to ruffle some feathers with some of the stuff I’ve been writing for this publication, but was I being sued? Surely it’s legal to say that protesting Wal-Mart is a waste of time, Cracker Barrel likes white people, and that vandalism is a stupid means of communication. As I opened the envelope, a lawsuit was mentioned, but not one filed against me. Nope, a bunch of lawyers had filed one for me and sent me a check. A check for seventeen cents. Gee, thanks…

Often, people who win lawsuits receive a windfall of cash and buy cars or homes, take vacations, pay medical bills, or even retire. But seventeen cents is not a lot of money. Not only is seventeen cents not enough to buy a car or take a vacation, it’s not even enough money to buy a stamp to mail these lecherous lawyers a letter telling them to stop wasting my time.

Evidently, the class-action lawsuit that I “won” was against a credit card company that, while I had an account with them, overcharged me for something. Of course, I will never know what I was overcharged for as the letter was very brief and very vague. The lawyers did state in the letter that I could “receive more information regarding the settlement” if I wrote to them but, again, I won’t be doing that because it will cost me more than seventeen cents to do.

Lawsuits like this serve but one purpose: to make rich lawyers richer. In the letter, the firm states “at the time of the settlement, we estimated that the average finance charge refund would be less than $1 for each eligible cardmember. That estimate proved correct.” This is typical. While the total payout from a class-action lawsuit is usually not enough to award the plaintiffs much more than a few bucks (or less) a piece, the lawyers make a ton of money by taking a percentage of the total haul. Since the lawyers comprise just a handful of people, their individual payout is hundreds, thousands, or even millions of times larger that that of a single plaintiff.

I’m not against people making a lot of money, and I know that, legally, the lawyers must contact me, but please. I know what they’re doing. I wish they’d just leave me out of it. Sure, my credit card company might have overcharged me a few bucks, but are these lawyers any less sleazy when they make sure “justice is done” when justice doesn’t do anything for anybody but themselves?

The letter also stated that “all proceeds from uncashed checks will be donated to charity.” Perhaps they can donate mine to the “Don’t Let Your Kid Grow Up To Be A Scumbag Attorney Fund.”