Lawyer Barons: What Their Contingency Fees Really Cost America

Friends of Ours ^ | 09/12/12 | Friends of Ours

[AtlasStalled]

Law professor Lester Brickman apparently is not a big fan of the lawsuit industry, and is out with a new book Lawyer Barons in which he provides "a window into the seamy underworld of contingency fees that the bar and the courts not only tolerate but even protect and nurture" and "examines how the contingency-fee driven class action gives lawyers the power to extract ransoms and print money" according to the publisher Cambridge University Press's website.

Philip Howard, the author of The Death of Common Sense, is among the many who offers his praise for the book:

"In Lawyer Barons, Lester Brickman exposes the new legal power elite as little more than a sleazy, self-interested racket. Brickman surgically dismantles each rationale for their approach to justice, revealing a sewer of hypocrisy and greed. Brickman lets the facts do the work of the powerful indictment, leaving the Bar with this unavoidable choice – does it stand for justice, or money?"

Ted Frank, a founder of the Center for Class Action Fairness which challenges settlement agreements that seemingly favor plaintiffs lawyers over their purported clients, describes Lawyer Barons as "a landmark book," and he writes in his review on Amazon.com that "Brickman lays out a compelling case for the distorting effects of contingency fees, their effect on tort law, their incentives for extensive mass tort fraud, and the failure of the judicial system to police the conflicts of interest inherent in class actions."

[jeffc]

I’ve been on Synthroid (and now levothyroxine) for over 20 years. I remember when the makers of Synthroid were sued with a class-action suit. I read the fineprint - it stated that, if they won, I’d get a months free prescription and the attorneys would get tens of millions of dollars. I declined to participate in their money-grubbing scheme.

[boop]

I've been wondering if pharmaceutical companies play "both sides of the fence" on class action lawsuits. Have their own legal team file a suit for a "bad drug", lose the case, and keep the settlement $ for themselves under a different name. It shuts down future lawsuits, because what single plaintiff would take on a big drug company?

BTW, I always read the fine print when I'm "invited" to join a class action settlement. In every single case my "award" is something useless, like a $100 off "coupon" toward my next purchase of a Land Rover, or a full fare Carnival cruise. The lawyer's awards are always multi-millions of dollars.