- “Three Bad Arguments for Government Paid Leave” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- So much wrong with Bernie Sanders scheme of a guaranteed government job for everyone [Ryan Bourne, Cato] “This old socialist standby deserves to stay exactly where we left it — on the ash heap of history.” [Megan McArdle]
- NYC legislates “dues checkoff” payable to activist groups [Ruth McCambridge, Nonprofit Quarterly]
- “Ralph Lauren interns get next to nothing after winning lawsuit” [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
- Uh-oh: Ford Foundation funding Harvard Law School project to redesign U.S. labor law from ground up [Benjamin Sachs, On Labor]
- The federal law that forbids employers from ceasing to participate in union (multiemployer) pension plans unless they pay massive “withdrawal liability” including obligations of other employers is unjust and destructive. Now it’s playing havoc with the makers of Peeps confections [Damien Paletta, Washington Post/Lehigh Valley Live, related earlier]
3 Comments
The Ralph Lauren class action settlement–
Maybe the original lawsuit was overhyped, but the payout is less objectionable than many. The class plaintiffs are being paid real money rather than worthless coupons, and the standard 33% commission to the lawyers is based on actual payouts rather than inflated nominal value of coupons.
Hugo, it’s not the most abusive class-action settlement (for the clients) by far, but 1/3 to the lawyers means that the “damages” paid by Ralph Lauren were only about $450 per intern. Unless the average intern only worked a few weeks, that seems very low – like the lawyers who filed suit rate their chances of winning at trial as rather low, but the company decided to pay them $108K to just go away. The clients did better than most because there are hundreds of them, rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands in a coupon settlement – but it sounds more like the clients are splitting 2 times what the lawyers wanted to get, than that they’re getting 2/3 of what they deserve.
IMO,filing a poorly-founded case in order to extort a small settlement is abusive of the legal system and the defendants. We need a loser-pays system, where the innocent defendant has a strong motivation to go to trial, and the plaintiff with a poor case has good reason to never file a suit in the first place, or to drop it as soon as discovery turns up problems in the case.
“but 1/3 to the lawyers means that the “damages” paid by Ralph Lauren were only about $450 per intern.”
Per the linked article, it was $305 per intern.
“We need a loser-pays system, where the innocent defendant has a strong motivation to go to trial, and the plaintiff with a poor case has good reason to never file a suit in the first place, or to drop it as soon as discovery turns up problems in the case.”
How would that work with a class-action suit?
Are there any loser pays systems out there that allow class-action suits? How do they handle that?