subject: No Value Vouchers [print this page] For years personal injury lawyers have been turning courtrooms into clip joints, divvying up millions of dollars in damage awards from big companies and then handing clients discount coupons to use on their next purchase. Working to protect these people is a judge reigning from Florida. Condemned by this judge was a New York City law firm that requested for $1.4 million in legal fees after offering cruise ship passengers travel vouchers for future trips with values ranging from $10 to $60.
For $2.9 million, a class action lawsuit against a cruise ship company was settled by the law firm since the company was responsible for unreasonably increasing port docking charges. Here, the legal fees amounted to $1.4 million. In a 27 page ruling, the judge sliced the $1.4 million request to slightly less than $300,000 and ordered it split among the law firm and four other southern Florida firms who are also parties to the suit.
About 25 percent of the lawyers' legal fees were ordered to be paid in the form of the same discount vouchers given to the 80,000 plaintiffs they managed to corral into the lawsuit. According to the lead lawyer of the firm, the vouchers were not useless since most of the passengers were repeat cruise customers. Considering how they can't use vouchers for bills, his colleagues said that they needed cash. According to the judge, it is common for personal injury lawyers to reward their clients with a minimal amount of money without them knowing that they have generated millions in settlements. By using common sense in defending consumers against ravenous class action lawyers, the judge was applauded by tort reform advocates. The head of the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee think tank, called the travel awards ridiculous, adding that essentially these vouchers have no value whatsoever. Getting $10 off of a cruise amounting to hundreds of dollars is pure nonsense.
You will still find good class action lawsuits though. People should get compensation if they are afflicted not by their own doing. Yet all too often these days, class action lawsuits are designed not to comfort the afflicted, but to enrich the already wealthy. Waging a class action suit against HMOs in a state in America was a group of multimillionaire personal injury lawyers led by a Mississippi attorney. While patient care remains unchanged, the personal injury lawyers conceded that this will cause health care costs to go through the roof. According to this Mississippi lawyer, he met with Wall Street financial analysts in October 1999 to get them to agree to downgrading HMO stocks and force a shareholder sell off. His logic was correct.
Quick and easy, the lawyers will get millions when the HMOs settle out of court after stock prices plummet. In one way or another, these lawsuits will harm the country as a Yale University law professor said. You can expect the demise of the managed care industry due to this.
Here, the main result will be an increase in health care costs to all Americans. The lawsuit against the HMOs is just the latest in a long line of greed driven class actions that ought to spur congressional Republicans and Democrats to pass a meaningful tort reform act. With regard to the retirement funds of lawyers who travel in their own private jets and go fishing on luxury yachts, average working Americans no longer which to contribute to this.
