Class Action Lawsuits

There might be no bigger farce at the moment in our society than class action lawsuits. The concept is a reasonable one - have a company suffer punitive damages for a situation where they were negligent and caused injury or financial loss to their customers. But the system is a joke, and the upshot of these affairs seems to be millions paid to lawyers, nothing to the injured party, and a slap on the wrist to the corporation.

Here is how these typically work:
1. A company imposes a fraudulent fee of $4.95 to 12 million customers over a 5 year period.

2. A class action lawsuit is filed.

3. The way you happen to find out about this is when you see an advertisement in small print on page 55 of TV Guide that says "If you stayed at a Sheraton hotel between August 1993 and May 1998, paid an "Administrative" fee, and have all of your receipts, you might be entitled to participate in a settlement."

4. You spend 3 hours going to a website and/or calling a phone number to find out that no information is available, but you can mail a bunch of documents to 666 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY.

5. The final settlement is reached. Sheraton agrees to send coupons for 5% off a future stay to the 11 people who sent in the proper paperwork, and to pay the $1.6 million legal fees (leaving them a profit of $58 million on the fraudulent fees).

By the way, lest you think this is a hypothetical example, as part of one of these settlements I received a voucher last week from Starwood Hotels for $8 off of the rack rate at any of 12 named Starwood hotels in Florida and Texas, provided I call a special 800 number when making the advance reservation. You can now insert your own joke at my expense.

This action has no class.