Well...that sounds like the response of someone with even less knowledge of the subject than I. F. Lee, I can cite to you volumes of case law which backs me up on this. One recent class-action against a Hooters restaurant in Georgia on behalf of 1,300 plaintiffs resulted in an award of $12 million, of which $4 million went to the attorneys, with each of the plaintiffs receiving about $6,000.00. The owner of the Hooters restaurant was forced into bankruptcy.
Another notorious example is Hoffman v. BancBoston Mortgage Corp. (No. CV-91-1880, Mobile County, Alabama) in which the plaintiff class members alleged that the bank over-collected on their escrow accounts. Said plaintiffs were issued refunds ranging from $0.00 to $8.76 as part of the approved settlement, which also permitted the bank to deduct the $8.5 million in attorney fees from the accounts of the 300,000 class members who joined in the settlement, resulting in a net loss for the class members. One plaintiff recovered $2.19, and paid $91.33 in attorney fees--a net loss of $89.14.
The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(d), 1453, and 1711-1715), was passed in response to the concerns of consumer advocacy groups, which argued that class-actions unjustly enrich trial lawyers. It codifies procedures for review of attorney fees which are deemed excessive in relation to the benefit actually realized by the class members.
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