One of the more subtle tricks in the plaintiffs’ bar’s arsenal is the use of the class action to shut down the customer relations of a consumer products company. A company acknowledges a problem, tries to work with its customers to resolve the problem—and lawyers whose only previous role in the case was to read newspaper headlines about the problem swoop in, file a class action, and demand that the defendant stop contacting “their clients,” nearly all of whom had no role in selecting the attorney. Later, the litigation lobby points to the role that the class action had in resolving the problem in defense of litigation as a solution, and no one remembers that the class action was what prevented the problem from being solved to consumers’ satisfaction in the first place.
A notice on the Menu Foods website posted May 24 suggests that precisely that has happened in their pet-food recall case, and Menu Foods, a victim of mislabeled food from a supplier, will not be able to compensate their customers without paying a gigantic commission to parasitic trial lawyers first.
Update: USA Today has a one-sided account reflecting a judge parroting the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ characterizations of the contacts. Without a full listing of the facts, we cannot tell whether the Menu Foods example is a good one; unfortunately, USA Today did not see fit to tell the whole story.
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Another example would be the “Million Little Pieces” fiasco. As I understand it, the company had ALREADY offered full refunds to anyone who bought the book… so what did the lawyers gain for their supposed clients? That is, couldn’t the clients sue the class action lawyer for not having the interst of the class in mind?
Wouldn’t this also be GENERALLY true as well?
I mean, there should be SOME way out of this mess…
Sorry, my optimism is showing.
Another take is here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-26-menu-foods-harassment_N.htm
Menu Foods isn’t exactly an innocent entity here. Their lawyers are probably just as bad as the ones running the class action mess.
At a previous hearing on Friday, May 18, the judge had cautioned Menu and Crawford that they should not contact people who had joined one of the lawsuits against the company. Legally, Menu cannot contact those plaintiffs directly but must go through their lawyers.
But in affidavits presented in court Wednesday, pet owners said they received calls that weekend from Crawford representatives who pressed them to answer questions even after being told the owners had hired lawyers. In some cases, the pet owners also received multiple calls from Crawford’s computerized phone banks after telling representatives they were represented by attorneys, according to the affidavits.
“Menu’s representatives asked owners to sign releases which waived their right to get advice from a lawyer,” said attorney Jay Edelson in an interview.
From another story that unfortunately is no longer linkable:
“The CFO of Menu Foods, Mark Wiens, sold about half of his shares in the company three weeks before the poisoned pet food recall was announced, Canadian insider trading reports show”
It’s a pity that the lawyers will be reaping so much money from this, but Menu Foods isn’t exactly blameless here.