A new class action lawsuit has charged two of the Chicago area’s largest utility companies with improperly adding finance charges and late fees to so-called “medical payment arrangements” – or special electric and natural gas bill repayment plans required by the state, should utility customers suffer significant health problems interfering with their ability to pay their bills on time. On Dec. …
Back in April, we wrote about an interesting lawsuit filed over excessive fees for PACER, the federal court system’s electronic records system. If you’re not a lawyer or journalist, and have never used PACER, it is difficult to put into words what a ridiculous and outdated system it is. Not only does it look like it was designed and built in 1998, the court system leverages ridiculous fees for …
Black Lives Matter protestors who were arrested last summer while demonstrating after Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police in Baton Rouge, La., will receive financial compensation from local and state authorities for $100,000. The 92 protestors, including DeRay Mckesson , accused them of excessive force and violating their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly, …
A “claims-made” class action settlement allows the defendant to make a large amount of money “available” to class members, but in order for the members to collect, they must jump through the hoops of correctly filing claims. Because of the low response rate in such settlements, the defendants will end up paying much less than the funds made available. Indeed, of the $8.5 million made available …
Bank of America is facing a lawsuit in Arizona from prisoners who contend they are being forced to become customers of the bank because they are given a BoA debit card that also has high and unusual fees. According to a federal class-action lawsuit, covered by Courthouse News Service , prisoners have to pay $15 each time they withdraw money from a teller. Daria Brill, the lead plaintiff in the …
Lawyers who won the massive $10.03 billion class-action settlement from Volkswagen Group over software that cheated on emissions tests now want their own payday: $175 million. The extraordinary sum requires extraordinary justification, and lead plaintiffs’ counsel Elizabeth Cabraser hopes her firm’s motion (PDF) on the matter, filed late last night with the judge, will do the trick. “The aggregate fees and costs award… is the equivalent of less than 2 percent of the monetary benefit provided to the Class, far below the …
In the dojo of frivolous litigation, Donald Trump is to men’s rights activist Steve Frye what a sensei is to a janitor. Frye, a resident of Huntington Beach, California, likes to sue service industry companies that offer any sort of “ladies’ night”-type promos. In 2013, for instance, he filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Cha Cha’s Latin Kitchen, from which he demanded $4,000 in compensation …
More than 250,000 homeowners who had loans serviced by Wells between 2005 and 2010 and paid for this type of appraisal could receive at least $120 each. Under its mortgage servicing agreement, Wells can require borrowers who default on their loan to provide an informal estimate of the home’s value, usually from a real estate broker. Starting in 2001, Wells Fargo began ordering these “broker …
In this Thursday, April 21, 2016, file photo, Joyce Ertel Hulbert, owner of a 2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI, holds a sign while interviewed outside the of the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. A federal judge in San Francisco is facing a deadline on whether to approve a nearly 5 billion deal over Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal that gives most affected car owners the option …
A federal judge has ordered that attorneys representing private individuals and companies who entered into economic and medical claims settlements with BP stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster are entitled to be paid $555.2 million to cover their legal fees and remaining court costs. The award equals about 4.3 percent of the estimated $13 billion that BP is expected to pay under the …