The Campaign to Persuade Consumers to Act Against Their Own Interests, and to Frustrate Efforts to Fight Back
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups representing corporate interests have spent over $1 billion in a six-month period on a propaganda campaign designed to persuade people that there is a litigation "crisis" in this country, and that frivolous lawsuits are clogging the courts and ruining the economy. They have done an excellent job. People actually believe that corporations are the victims of greedy trial lawyers who are in control of a system gone wild.
In reality, corporations are making more money than they ever have, and more often than not corporate rights take precedence over individual rights. In fact, as former New York Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, has observed (before he became the target of a federal investigation himself), big business has even enlisted the aid of the Executive Branch to use “the power of the federal government in an unprecedented attack on state legislatures, as well as attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.”
But even that is not enough. Corporations still complain loudly that they shouldn’t be held accountable for selling defective products and concealing dangerous defects from consumers unless and until the product actually injures or kills someone.
If corporate interests have their way, consumers would be prohibited from going to court to get their money back, even when it can be shown that a company knowingly concealed defects in their products and lied to government agencies that investigated them. According to this argument, the courthouse doors should be locked unless and until the product actually fails, and causes a death or serious injury.
This is utter nonsense. The law has never required someone to be injured or killed before allowing them to recover damages for fraud. Put simply, if one engages in fraud -- that is, misrepresenting or concealing facts that a reasonable person would be viewed as important -- they are subject to liability for the losses that are attributable to that fraud.
Consumer-Fraud Class Actions
For well over a decade, Fazio | Micheletti attorneys have prosecuted consumer-fraud cases that involve cover-ups by corporate executives who choose to save their companies money at the risk of their customers' life, limb, and their customers' pocketbook. Many of those cases have been brought after state and federal government regulatory agencies were duped into believing that the company had done nothing wrong.
In one case, for example, a major automaker knowingly installed a defective component in millions of its vehicles, which caused the engine to stall -- suddenly and unexpectedly, at highway speeds, at any time and at any speed -- and then continue functioning normally again. Thus, when customers companied, the automaker was able to persuade government regulators to close five separate safety-defect investigations by concealing what it knew about the source of the problem and persuading the government that engine stalling could be caused by any one of a hundred problems.
The problem cost the individual consumer less than $200 to fix -- far less than it would be worth to hire a lawyer to recover, and a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars it would take to prove that the company had engaged in wrongdoing. But when the $200 repair bill is multiplied by millions of consumers who were forced to pay it, suddenly it was the automaker that had something to worry about when they joined together in a class action. And the com any was right to worry.
After years of digging through over a million pages of internal documents and taking the depositions of over 130 individuals -- from rank-and-file engineers to nearly a dozen members of its board of directors -- consumers had their day in court, and the court found that the company had engaged in a massive cover-up
The Ruse of Comparing Attorney Fees with Individual Consumer’s Recovery
Ultimately, the case described above was resolved by settlement, and some might say that the fees we and our co-counsel recovered was another example of attorneys reaping a windfall while class members recover a comparatively small amount. But they would be wrong. We put approximately $6 million of our own money and nearly 100,000 hours of time into the case -- all of which would have been lost if we did not win the case.
In contrast, the automaker's lawyers (dozens of them from some of the largest, most expensive firms in the country) were paid by the hour and received their pay -- win or lose -- every single month.
As a result of the settlement, each class member was entitled to receive reimbursement of what they had paid to fix the defective component -- without a receipt for the first repair -- their warranty was doubled, and a $5 million fund was established to conduct automotive safety research at a major university.
Comparing the cost of a single repair to the fees six law firms earned for nearly 100,000 hours of work and $6 million in expenses is neither logical nor fair. But it’s not supposed to be. Indeed, comparing the recovery of a single class member to the work of dozens of lawyers over nearly seven years makes no sense at all -- but this is precisely how corporate interests want the public to perceive such results, and precisely why they characterize them that way.
At bottom, corporations could not care less how much consumers pay their lawyers. In fact, most would prefer that they pay as much as possible -- as long as it results in discouraging consumers or their prospective lawyers from prosecuting claims to enforce their rights. In the end, making arguments about attorney fees is simply another way to manipulate consumers into acting against their own interests, and protecting the very interests that undermine consumer rights.
Cases That are Amenable to Prosecution as a Class Action
Don't believe you have no legal recourse simply because you've been harmed by a large, powerful company, or because the injury doesn't involve thousands of dollars. The perpetrators of fraudulent schemes often count on that belief as a way of avoiding the courthouse. In reality, however, when you add up the relatively small amount out of which you've been defrauded with the amounts that many others have had taken from them, the total can amount to millions -- and, with increasing frequency, billions -- of dollars.
Those are precisely the kinds of wrongs that class actions are designed to rectify. Indeed, the class-action device is powerful enough to level the playing field between the largest, most well-funded corporations and the ordinary consumer, no matter what his or her individual resources may be.
As the California Supreme Court has observed:
Vasquez v. Superior Court, 4 Cal. 3d 800, 808 (1971).Protection of unwary consumers from being duped by unscrupulous sellers is an exigency of the utmost priority incontemporary society. . . . A class action by consumers produces several salutary by-products, including a therapeutic effect upon those sellers who indulge in fraudulent practices, aid to legitimate business enterprises by curtailing illegitimate competition, and avoidance to the judicial process of the burden of multiple litigation involving identical claims. The benefit to the parties and the courts would, in many circumstances, be substantial.
If you have been affected by a problem that you think affects others in the same way, tell us about it by clicking here. And don't be discouraged if your problem seems small. Unfortunately, some companies actually engage in unlawful activity because they believe the problem is too small to warrant a lawsuit. That strategy backfires, however, when large numbers of aggrieved individuals band together to bring a class action -- which provides a weapon powerful enough to get the attention of even the largest of corporations, regardless of the size of the individual claim.
Your complaint might be suitable for class-action treatment, and it could make a substantial difference, not only to you but to literally millions of others. If we agree to prosecute the case, we will do so on a contingent-fee (or mixed-billing) basis, and we'll advance all fees and costs in the matter. If the class does not recover, neither will we.
Initiating or Joining a Class Action
There is no need to do anything to "join" an ongoing case. Although a class action cannot be brought unless someone who is affected by the problem in question steps forward and serves as a class representative, the others who are affected need not take any affirmative steps to participate in the case after it has been filed. Rather, after the court certifies the case to proceed as a class action, members of the class are normally given an opportunity to "opt out" if they do not wish to be included; and if they do not, they’re deemed to be members of the class. And if the case is resolved favorably, class members will be notified about the outcome and what they must do to obtain their share of the benefits.
There are relatively rare exceptions, which occur when a case is certified as an "opt-in" class action. In those cases, class members must respond to the notice they receive by affirmatively stating that they wish to be part of the class.
Fazio | Micheletti LLP specializes in representing plaintiffs in class actions. We have served as lead counsel in class actions that have included tens of millions of members who reside in California, throughout the United States, and even other parts of the world.
We have an extraordinarily good track record, and we have resolved these cases in a manner that benefits those we represent, not just the attorneys. In short, we won't compromise the public interest for private gain, which is why national consumer groups have supported the cases we have prosecuted, as well as the manner in which we have resolved them.
For an unbiased view of class actions, click here to go to a Wikipedia article about class actions in state and federal courts in the United States, as well as in other countries.
