Class action lawsuits often are vehicles by which the trial lawyers get rich at the expense of the consumers or shareholders they purport to represent according to critics of the lawsuit industry, and the topic of attorneys' fees in class actions which frequently are rubber stamped by the judges was discussed by a panel sponsored by the Federalist Society.
Ted Frank, a founder of the Center for Class Action Fairness, was a member of the panel, and he said "the courts . . . are often the ones left with the job of policing attorneys fees in class action settlements" as reported by Jessica M. Karmasek for Legal Newsline: "'I'm not saying all judges are bad about this,' he said. 'But some awful settlements are approved.'"
Frank further says on Point of Law that "the cases where the lawyers are abusing the system are not an anomaly": "when the Center for Class Action Fairness is deciding whether to take a case, it's almost always deciding between cases where the attorneys are abusing the system a little, or whether they're abusing the system a lot."
Further reading that may be of interest:
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