Grand Theft Indeed

By Maria Laus, Author - LawCrossing

05/28/08

The lawsuit involved the above-mentioned pornography issue: one of the game versions had an uncompleted or hidden part where explicit pornography was simulated. This led to a class action lawsuit on behalf of the millions who allegedly suffered from it. There were 12 law firms involved, and for their efforts they managed to get a settlement of, at the most, $26,505 for their class since there were only 2,676 total claimants.

So now that the manufacturer has had to cough up, at the most, $26,505 to the allegedly injured parties, the attorneys are asking for a trifling sum to reward their efforts in this case: $1 million. Yes, that's a contingency fee of 3,774%. Not too bad for their yeoman efforts to get $26,505 for the poor plaintiffs!

Even under the law firm's account of the case, their contingency fee is still over 50% of the total award — and that involves some interesting accounting of costs as part of the award. It also counts chunks of money awarded to non-plaintiffs.

Twelve law firms are involved with this, which appears to be a real grand theft. Oh, and in actuality the law firms are claiming to be generous: they knocked their award down 28% out of generosity. Perhaps because a 3,700% contingency fee sounds so much better than a fee of almost 5,000%?

( 5 votes, average: 3.8 out of 5)

Grand Theft Indeed

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