Personal injury lawyers have this habit of getting millions of dollars worth of damage awards from big companies and then handing clients discount coupons to use. For these victims, they have a judge from the sunshine state on their side.
This judge actually condemned a New York City law firm considering how they provided cruise ship passengers travel vouchers for future trips with values ranging from to while they requested legal fees amounting to .4 million.
For .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.
The attorneys handed out a bill worth .4 million.It was in the 27 page ruling of the judge where the .4 million request was sliced to slightly less than 0,000 and divided among the 5 law firms that were involved in 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. In this case, most of the passengers were repeat cruise customers and this is why the lead lawyer of the firm said that the vouchers would be useful.
According to his colleagues, they need cash and not vouchers to pay their bills. Without their full knowledge, clients do not get the settlement that they deserve considering how devious personal injury lawyers can be and most of the time they are the ones who get to keep the millions in settlements.
Applause came from tort reform advocates when the judge used common sense in defending consumers against greedy class action lawyers. When it comes to the travel awards, they are ludicrous and the vouchers have no value according to head of the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee think tank. For cruises amounting to hundreds of dollars, getting off is not that big of a deal.
There are still good class action lawsuits. The people who should be adequately compensated are those who are genuine victims of a corporation's negligence. No longer do class action lawsuits comfort the afflicted because most of the time they are used to make rich people even richer.
Against HMOs in Miami, a class action suit was waged by a group of multimillionaire personal injury lawyers led by a Mississippi attorney. Without improving patient care in any way, the personal injury lawyers admit that this will lead to the costs of health care going through the roof.
This Mississippi lawyer argued that blatantly, when he met with Wall Street financial analysts in October 1999, in an effort to get them to downgrade HMO stocks and force a shareholder sell off. This was a perfect logic.
After stock prices plummet, the HMOs will agree to settle out of court earning millions for the lawyers effortlessly. Such lawsuits always contribute harm to the country according to a Yale University law professor. You can expect the demise of the managed care industry due to this.
What will happen here is that health care costs to all Americans will rise. The congressional Republicans and Democrats should pass a meaningful tort reform act because the lawsuit against the HMOs is only the latest in a long line of greed driven class actions. Considering the retirement funds of lawyers who travel in their own private jets and go fishing on luxury yachts, average working Americans want to stop contributing their hard earned money for this.