Posted on 09/19/2007 4:24:58 PM PDT by SmithL
Los Angeles (AP) -- A New York law firm accused of paying kickbacks to plaintiffs in class-action and shareholder lawsuits said Wednesday that one of its partners will be indicted and more charges will be filed against the firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Makes you wonder whether this law firm has any honest attorneys.
If this is going to go forward the every single ADA case is going to have a problem because ALL the cases pay kickbacks to the participates who claim injury in one form or another.
These were securities cases. The legitimate way to do it is to represent some shareholder with a significant amount of stock, such as a labor union pension fund. Milberg Weiss was getting in the cases by paying plaintiffs to go to court, which is a no no. A legitimate plaintiff would make some money on the case and no need to get a kickback.
Virtually all class-action lawsuits, in their present day form, are scams. An individual plaintiff within the class gets a couple hundred bucks and the firm handling the case gets millions on a percentage. Not to mention the cut that referring “farmers” (lawyers that do just enough paperwork to merit a pay-out on their referral).
Class actions are only a valuable thing to plaintiffs if the class is small and manageable. Nationwide class actions are a lawyer’s retirement dream.
Nice summation. There was a good market/consumer protective effect with the threat of these cases, i.e., cause for pause by the corporations and, indeed, the government (e.g. in taxpayer cases). But, ala$, the incentive$ and reward$ of abu$e (legi$lated by the whore$ in Congre$$ and do gooder judges) trumped the spirit and purpose of the class action vehicle for redress...
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