StrangeSox

BTW I still haven't seen anyone address Breyer's contention that restricting class action will essentially eliminate many legitimate claims because they're too small for individuals to file suit over.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 04:15 PM) So? I have yet to hear a good reason why arbitration is such a bad system. It's an efficient means of settling small claims. And most of the time you have the right to still sue in court as an alternative. Plenty of contracts require arbitration and bar you from filing a claim in court or from acting as a class. The AT&T agreement was actually one of the better ones, but it still completely barred class action. Not sure why companies should be able to limit your access to the courts. Arbitration itself isn't something evil, but the current system is ripe for abuse and limiting claimants' rights.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 04:06 PM) First, that's not the case. If its actually literally "small claims" court, they cost is zero if they win and they don't need legal representation. But if they lose, they can be made to pay the large company's attorneys' fees, which will be pretty substantial and not worth the risk. Or, if it's a relatively small amount (the $30 in AT&T v Concepcion), it's not worth the risk just for the few hundred in filing fees. Sure, but since we're discussing potential impacts of these decisions, you should focus on the most important examples that highlight potential problems.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 04:05 PM) You mean that individual plaintiffs will have to deal with the costs of bringing lawsuits, instead of getting a free ride as a member of a class? At the end of the day class action lawsuits generally benefit 1 group of individuals, lawyers. Millions of dollars are paid to the class action attorneys, very little real money ever reaches the classes hands. Its just a stupid system regardless, but if you want to sue a company, you should have to pay the cost of the lawsuit. They are free to file pro se and most likely the Defendant would settle for nuisance (you can generally get a few hundred dollars just for them not having to file appearance actually hire an attorney). As I said Class Actions are for the benefit of attorneys who make millions, while the injured class gets pennies. Honestly Im not a huge fan of class actions just because they are really nothing more than individual claims that are joined together so that a law firm can get a big pay day. I really dont believe class action suits are there for the benefit of the actual individuals, otherwise you wouldnt see the type of settlements that the class action attorneys sign off on. As long as the attorneys get paid, they could care less what happens to their "plaintiffs". Id be far more cynical if class action lawsuits could only be brought by NFP law firms with the majority of the money going to the harmed class. Pointing out problems with class-actions and how attorneys take the lions-share doesn't really address this: Basically, without class action, a company can get away with large-scale fraud, discrimination, etc. if the effects on each individual are spread out enough so as to not make it worth their time or potential attorneys' fees to pursue remedies. Obviously losing the ability to file class actions isn't going to make legitimate suits for thousands of dollars go away, but it will make thousands of suits for low dollars go away.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 03:56 PM) On the other hand if a few million people filed individual lawsuits for small amounts, that might change ATTs thought process here. But they're not going to because it's not worth your time to spend hours and hours and risk possible attorneys' fees etc. for $30. And, again, as noted in that dissent, an important function of class-actions is to inform more people that they've been defrauded or harmed in some way that they might not otherwise be aware of.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 03:48 PM) Walmart doesnt get away with it, any individual can still sue Walmart. Class action lawsuits are not a right, they are really only supposed to be there for convenience. I'll just go back to some commentary on the AT&T v Concepcion case based on Breyer's dissent: Basically, without class action, a company can get away with large-scale fraud, discrimination, etc. if the effects on each individual are spread out enough so as to not make it worth their time to pursue remedies. eta: Go back to my .25 raise versus .30 raise, maybe a grand total of $200 of legitimate damages for the individual who worked there a year. Are you really going to bring suit against that on your own? Probably not. You might not even be aware of the pattern of discrimination. Would you sign on to a large class-action suit? Maybe, maybe not, but the likelihood is much higher.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 03:37 PM) Seems pretty logical to me... how do you prove a subjective, non-statistically-presentable act on such an enormous scale? The actors are all so fully different, unless you are trying to say that the highest executives are somehow promoting bad behavior. And you'd have to have evidence to prove direct actions like that. I tend to agree with SCOTUS' majority here. Individuals can bring suit and try their cases, but representing a class that large in this non-numbers scenario seems impractical. Yeah, it's a very unwieldy suit they were bringing, and if it were successful, could open a whole host of other problems. The flip side to that is Walmart gets away with what appears to be systematic discrimination.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 03:29 PM) It's probably also worth noting that Walmart could happily now include a mandatory forced arbitration clause in every employee contract. That also bars class-action in any and all cases.

Are there ever times you feel class-action is legitimate?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 02:04 PM) I'm happy with a decision that forces people to prove their individual case when there's not a lot of commonality to infer that each plaintiff was the victim of the same discrimination and suffered the same types of damages. If discrimination was pervasive at Walmart, you could still be a victim without being able to prove the merits of an individual case or point to a specific, personal action. i.e. see Brown vs. Plata where the majority agrees with this line of reasoning.

I'm glad I talked my fiance into seeing Super 8 on Saturday instead.

Is it really so bad that we're pining for Mark Teahen to get AB's?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:02 PM) Individual suits. You can still use those statistics to bolster your case if you don't already have a strong one ("see jury! not only did she not get the promotion despite being overly qualified, but she's not the only one in the company...") Well that goes back to the argument we had before, most of those suits will never get filed because individually they're not that strong. You need the grand pattern of being a s***ty company to drive the case and to have it actually make an impact on Walmart, both financially and policy-wise. eta: "I only got a .25 raise as cashier while the males routinely got .30" isn't a case worth suing over individually, but if you've got 100,000 cashiers with the same claim in a class suit...well...

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:52 PM) But by this logic any women employed by Wal-mart is now a class member, even if they never applied for a promotion or raise, let alone actually being denied those things in favor of a male counterpart. That's Scalia's point - how can you really say there's commonality when you're talking about tens of thousands of business decisions that are independent from one another? You're basically using two criteria to define the class - being a female and employment with Wal-mart. Well that's why it's a very difficult issue. How does this get fairly judicated?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:14 PM) Yeah, they weren't split on that issue. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:34 PM) In this case, you're both completely incorrect. There were 2 parts of the decision, one part decided unanimously, and another part decided 5-4. The 9-0 agreement part of that decision was regarding whether back pay was an appropriate response under a certain part of the law usually used for injunctive relief. The question of whether or not these plaintiffs had enough in common to qualify for class-action status was decided on the usual 5-4 lines. lol (at myself)

Based on the three recent class cases, it seems like Scalia doesn't believe that class-action should even exist.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:42 PM) instead of relying on general statistics of a company employing millions and millions of people? I dunno, statistical samples of that large of a group to show systematic discrimination seems pretty appropriate. A thousand tiny, individual claims may not amount to much on their own, but lumped together, can show that Walmart is either actively discriminatory or does nothing to correct or prevent it.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:11 PM) this was a unanimous decision. Yeah, they weren't split on that issue.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 09:39 AM) For the billionth time, it's also fairly obvious that Williams DOES NOT have the power to fire Ozzie. Then he should resign, if only for his own dignity.

Here is the complete article: http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/9/1/16/abstract Smoking and obesity are cited as primary causes along with wealth inequality. From the article:

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 09:27 AM) You show that life expetancy continues to increase, but for a specific region and gender, and you manage to take that as a sign of failing health care. Quite a leap, no? Life expectancy in the US is increasing more slowly than all of those awful socialist countries with terrible healthcare and rationing and millions fleeing to America to get treatment. In some places, it's actually falling, which just doesn't really happen in developed countries. It's not a leap to lampoon the "rah! rah! best healthcare system in the world!" cheerleading crap based on that. Well, that is a huge problem, especially since it's generally the impoverished areas we're talking about. But... Agreed, but I'll point to the same "rah! rah!" cheerleaders viciously attacking Michelle Obama for her healthy foods campaign, vehement opposition to trans fat bans or taxes, vehement opposition to food subsidies for the poor, etc. A big problem with health care and access to it is poverty. But, yeah, ultimately poverty is the larger issue here and a single-payer UHC system is an attempt to address just one area that's largely affected by poverty. It's just that it's a pretty important area.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 08:18 AM) The problem is...I think he thinks he works hard enough. Remember the 3 pages or so of people defending how insane his workout/yoga routine was we had in last year's thread when this same topic came up? Maybe that's it. He busts his ass. He's not a lazy slouch wasting his talents. But he doesn't work on the areas he needs to work on the most.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 08:23 AM) I'm pretty sure that "a mental image of a person eating Jesus" is one of the Holy Sacraments. Only if you're Catholic afaik

I think the analysis linked explained the how and why and the split better than I could summarize. Class action suits have been hit pretty hard recently by this court. eta: I'm not really sure if this is a bad decision, though. The case would be very, very hard to prove with such a large class with a wide range of claims. I mean, ethically, yeah, I'd like to see terrible companies like Walmart pay through the nose for their terrible business practices, but I don't know that this lawsuit and the way it was structured was really legit. eta2: but they also upheld the class cert. in the California prison case over Scalia's ranting and fire-and-brimstone predictions.

Falling life expectancies in the US US Healthcare! Best in the world! :headbang