With regard to personal injury lawyers, from big companies they get massive payoffs but their clients only take home discount coupons. Hoping to assist these victims is a Florida judge. What this judge did was criticize a New York City law firm because they provided cruise ship passengers travel vouchers for future trips with values ranging from $10 to $60 when they requested legal fees amounting to $1.4 million.
For the law firm, they settled a class action lawsuit against a cruise ship company for $2.9 million after the company had been caught raising port docking charges and passing them on to unwary passengers. According to them, they deserved $1.4 million for this. After the judge lessened the $1.4 million request to slightly less than $300,000, in a 27 page ruling, he ordered to have it split among the law firms, 5 of them, that were involved in the case.
One more order was for the legal fees of the lawyers where 25 percent of it should be paid in the form of the same discount vouchers given to the 80,000 plaintiffs they managed to corral into the lawsuit. Most of the passengers were repeat cruise customers and this is why the lead lawyer of the firm said that the vouchers were beneficial. As they can't pay their bills with vouchers, they needed to have cash. Personal injury lawyers do not divulge the earnings that they get to their clients so the latter gets a trivial amount of money while these lawmen gain millions and millions of dollars. By using common sense in defending consumers against ravenous class action lawyers, the judge was applauded by tort reform advocates. The travel awards are unreasonable and the vouchers have no value according to the head of the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee think tank. There is no value in getting $10 off of a cruise that is worth hundreds of dollars.
This does not deem all class action lawsuits as bad. When people are afflicted because of a corporation's neglect, they deserve just compensation. Serving those who are wealthy making them wealthier in the process are class action lawsuits that used to be for the sake of the afflicted. Targeted by a group of multimillionaire personal injury lawyers led by a Mississippi attorney were the HMOs in Miami and they waged a class action suit against them. 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. As mentioned by this Mississippi lawyer, he met with Wall Street financial analysts in October 1999 because he wanted to get them to downgrade HMO stocks and force a shareholder sell off. This was a perfect logic.
Quick and easy, the lawyers will get millions when the HMOs settle out of court after stock prices plummet. Such lawsuits always contribute harm to the country according to a Yale University law professor. Because of this, the managed care industry may be eliminated.
As a result, expect an increase in health care costs to all Americans. When it comes to the lawsuit against the HMOs, it is the latest in a long line of greed driven class actions and this is why the congressional Republicans and Democrats should pass a meaningful tort reform act. Average working Americans are getting tired of contributing to the retirement funds of lawyers who travel in their own private jets and go fishing on luxury yachts.
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