Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I think we can't talk about this bill and talk about arbitration without also talking about class actions. Mayer Brown did a study on class-action suits. Rather than simply relying on anecdotes, the study undertook an empirical analysis of neutrally selected sample sets of putative consumer and employee class- action lawsuits filed in Federal court in 2009. In the entire dataset, not one of the class actions ended in a final judgment on the merits for the plaintiff. None of the class actions went to trial, either before a judge or a jury. The vast majority of cases produced no benefits to most members of the putative class, even though in a number of those cases, the lawyers who sought to represent the class often enriched themselves in the process, and the lawyers representing the defense as well. Approximately 14 percent of all class-action cases remain pending 4 years after they were filed, without resolution or even a determination of whether the case could go forward on a class-wide basis. In these cases, class members have not yet received any benefits and likely will never receive any, based on the disposition of the other cases we have studied. Over one-third, 35 percent, of the class actions that have been resolved were dismissed voluntarily by the plaintiff. Many of these cases settled on an individual basis, meaning a payout to the individual named plaintiff and the lawyers who brought the suit, even though the class members receive nothing.…”