An extraordinary number of consumers asked to be excluded from the class action settlement over Sears kitchen stoves that are allegedly too prone to tip when an opened oven door is leaned on. With humor quaint, the Chamber-backed Madison County Record reports on the reaction of class action lawyer Stephen Tillery:
At a Jan. 15 settlement hearing, Tillery interpreted the widespread rejection as a sign that he drafted a successful class notice.
“People read their mail,” he told Circuit Judge Barbara Crowder. “There was no problem with notice.”
(Steve Korris, “Consumer groups ‘ecstatic’ over Sears settlement, despite opt out of 4,896 stove owners”, Madison County Record, Jan. 24).
Plaintiff’s attorneys are slated to pocket $17 million in fees, which Tillery describes as modest compared to “the fund of monies made available to the class” by the troubled retailer, which he estimates at $500 million. “Made available” is of course a term of art, and it is anyone’s guess as to how many class members will actually take the time and trouble to file for refunds of up to $100 on old stoves. Inevitably, however, last year’s Sears wheel alignment class settlement comes to mind (see May 17 and Jul. 31, 2007). In that settlement the lawyers projected that consumers would redeem millions of dollars in coupons (and used that as the basis for their fee calculations), but the actual sum redeemed turned out to be $2,402.
4 Comments
I wonder if courts have ever explored the possibility of pegging the attorney fees in some ratio to the amount actually redeemed by the class?
This is kinda peripheral, I guess; my wife, a real estate broker, had a buyer who when she moved in found that the sellers had broken the oven door by standing on it to remove items from the cupboard above the stove. Must not have been a Sears stove, as it didn’t tip.
I had a Sears stove installed during the period indicated. My previous stove had an anti-tip device that worked with the new stove, so it wasn’t necessary to install the anti-tip device when the new one was installed. How many people had a new stove installed that already had the anti-tip device in place so that the installer wouldn’t necessarily have to install an anti-tip when installing the stove?
BTW I love my new Kenmore stainless steel 5 burner /convection oven stove. It’s the bomb.
[…] Does class actioneer Stephen Tillery really want to call renewed public attention to his settlement with Sears, in which the settling lawyers made out so well ($17 million) given the somewhat elusive benefits to the class of consumers? (Madison County Record, Jul. 30, and editorial, Aug. 2). Our earlier coverage of the case appeared Jan. 31. […]