Quote:
Originally Posted by EE-BO
This may be a nice attempt at discrediting my argument by saying you know more about the law than I do (which I would hope you do since you are the lawyer in this conversation), but it is not relevant to the discussion at hand.
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In an ironic twist, I'm certainly not a lawyer - I'm a consultant. Large class action suits help to drive my entire field, for better and worse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EE-BO
I would love to get into a detailed discussion about the premise being exposure- but to do so would get into details that will let you know about one of the cases I worked on which was highly publicized.
But forget all that for a moment, and forget class action, forget fees and forget all the other smoke screens here. Let's try a hypothetical with the greatest degree of detail I am comfortable sharing (meaning the below is not a deviation from facts of a specific case, but is generalized.)
You are an attorney. You have 500 asbestos plaintiffs in front of you- all of which you have documented evidence that you solicited to file a claim.
5 of those people had extensive exposure over many years and are showing serious symptoms of being ill. 495 of them had minimal exposure, many of them 10+ years ago, and NONE of them show ANY signs of ill effects from their past exposure. By minimal exposure I mean that in some cases the plaintiff- while properly masked- encountered asbestos material the size of a coin for a few moments.
You group all of these cases into one action- be it class action or a compilation for administrative purposes- and you settle out of court for a certain amount.
Your 5 plaintiffs who had long term exposure and are showing symptoms- all working class men in rural towns with no knowledge of the legal system- get $30,000 each on average at the end.
Your other 495 plaintiffs get $15,000 each on average at the end.
Take into account that today a legitimate asbestos claim for someone with long term exposure and known medical impact is in the millions.
Also take into account that a single suit for someone with minimal exposure and no signs is a no-go.
Tell me as a member of the general public (and the general public is not all that stupid) that there is not a serious ethical issue here and please explain why.
Tell me how your advice to those 5 medically impacted clients to settle for $30,000 along with a cast of others was better for them than pursuing a solo case.
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I'll cling to the IANAL defense here, but I'd agree there is strong potential for ethical concerns and severe conflict of interest.
However, this does not change the fact that while the damages awards may be different for those who are ill, there may not be any sort of difference between the sick and the healthy in the eyes of the law. No one here can discuss this issue with you any further without more specific details on the issues involved, which is probably impossible.
Also, there's another potential obviating factor here: individual-plaintiff cases are insanely profitable for attorneys, as well, and if the implication is that the sick plaintiffs are included to drive up damages awards (which they probably would, again trust me here), then it seems somewhat shifty to conclude it is somehow 'better' for the attorney to try a class-action case instead of individual cases (at the expense of the 5 sick plaintiffs).
You also run into problems here where the class representatives are often decided upon by the judge, and so the five sick plaintiffs may not even be the class reps, and etc etc etc - the scenario is too complex to really break down into such broad strokes.
However, I will agree that abusing the five sick plaintiffs at their expense is, at the least, a breach of ethics - I'm just not sure how often that even really happens, or how likely it is that the abuse is as clean-cut as in your hypothetical.
Does any of this make sense? I'm out of my mind tonight . . .