Bluetooth Headset Makers in Class-Action Lawsuit — Give Me a Break
Have you ever received a letter notifying you that you’re involved in a class-action lawsuit and that your rights may be affected? Usually it involves the fact that you purchased something from a list of companies who’ve been sued and a proposed settlement has been made that will determine what your damages will be. I got one of these letters yesterday that involves a suit against Motorola, Plantronics and Jabra, concerning Bluetooth headsets they sold. The suit was filed because these companies allegedly did not warn consumers of a “risk of hearing loss and that Defendants acted wrongfully when they did not warn consumers of the risk (if it exists).”
I had to read that part twice, how they are being sued because they didn’t warn about a risk that might not exist. That’s what it says and that’s what it means. Can you say frivolous lawsuit? I knew you could. This is what’s wrong with this system in the U.S. Why bring a class-action suit like this in the first place? The answer is money. Millions of dollars are being pursued from these big, bad companies and all under the guise of trying to protect us, the unknowing public.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not railing against the ability to take recourse against companies that wrong us as consumers. It’s important that we have an avenue for redressing wrongs. I’m no legal expert, but from all that I’ve seen of these class-action suits, I can’t say I’ve ever seen any consumer get fairly represented when the redressing takes place. It seems to me only the lawyers involved get any redressing. And they deserve it; you can never have enough Armani suits.
This becomes glaringly obvious when you read through the aforementioned document above. The defendants in the suit “deny their Bluetooth headsets are unsafe or that they did anything wrong. Defendants are settling only to avoid the risk and expense of trial.” In other words, the law firms representing you and I bullied these companies into accepting a class-action settlement to keep their potential risk as small as possible. This is how class-action suits work and what’s wrong with them.
If my best interests are being served by those who brought this class-action suit against these companies, what does this settlement mean for me and the other millions who bought headsets? Nothing, it turns out.
“It is not practical or economical to provide benefits directly to individual Class Members because the Class is very large and the amount each Class Member would receive is very small. Therefore, the Class Representative, the attorneys for the Class, and the Defendants agree that the cost of distributing any kind of benefit directly to Class Members would consume too much of the Proposed Settlement benefits. Instead, they believe that providing funding to non-profit organizations that focus on preventing hearing loss will indirectly benefit all Class Members”.
In other words, there are too many of us consumers, so we wouldn’t get much anyway. That’s the reason for the part of the settlement that “will donate $100,000 to one or more non-profit organizations that focus on preventing hearing loss.” This sounds like a drop in the bucket to me but a brilliant strategy, because who among us can complain about a lawsuit that gives part of the settlement to charity?
The full settlement agreement shows the real purpose behind this (and many) class-action lawsuits. In addition to the $100,000 generously donated to several charities the proposed settlement will pay this:
Class Counsel will ask the court for up to $800,000 in attorneys’ fees and up to $38,000 for reimbursement of documented expenses. Class Counsel will also request up to $12,000 total for the Class Representatives, who helped the lawyers on behalf of the whole Class. The Court may award less than these amounts. Defendants will separately pay the fees and expenses the Court orders. These payments will not reduce the amount Defendants will donate to charity.
Defendants will also separately pay the costs to provide notice to the Class and administer the Proposed Settlement, up to $1.2 million. If those costs are less than $1.2 million, Class Counsel may request reimbursement for additional documented expenses up to $12,000, which Defendants will pay upon approval by the Court.
It’s easy to see where the money will really go and who gets it — the law firms working in our best interests. No doubt the ultimate take will be in excess of $2 million as evidenced by these documents and what is really going on. To recap, the aggrieved parties (us) get nothing, a charity gets a pittance and the seven law firms handling the suit get a few million bucks. Sounds fair to me.
I win as a consumer in this suit because my best interests are being looked after. When I buy a Bluetooth headset in the future there will no doubt be a sticker on the box warning me that if I keep the volume too high I risk my hearing. That’s a big win for me. I am consumer, hear me roar.
You could easily rename this “bailout” or “stimulus.” It is really no different than the Fed handing out our money to the very companies, banks, investment firms etc that screwed the consumers in the first place. The middle class always takes the hit because we are not poor enough to be overlooked and not rich enough to hide. Class action lawsuits are a joke perpetuated by the judicial system. Much like a Seinfeld episode, this is a lawsuit about nothing.
I did get this notice earlier this week. It hit the round file about as fast as it took me to read “hearing loss” from a bluetooth headset. Give me a break! My JX10 is only usable if I crank it all the way up when driving down the highway. My biggest complaint about my Jawbone I is that there is no volume control. I have a hard time hearing meetings while on the road.
Sure, the sign flashes “Don’t Walk,” but it doesn’t flash “Because You Might Get Hit By a Car If You Do Walk.”
And at the Laundromat, the sign says, “Don’t Overfill Machines,” but it doesn’t say, “Remove Persons from Clothes Before Loading.” Or “Persons Wearing Clothes in Machine May Become Wet and Dizzy.”
That some people go around thinking that way is weird enough, but that it costs us all verges on criminal.
Typical settlement is that the lawyers get millions and the consumers get coupons. Yes, coupons to buy more of the supposed defective product.
I live near the summer house of the lawyer from the Illinois tobacco class action lawsuit. It is disgusting looking at his $40M summer house and watching him speed around in his Ferrari collection.
Tobacco companies should have been taxed to pay for health benefits, there was no need to transfer billions of dollars to lawyers via lawsuits on the government’s behalf other than to create massive political payoffs to the lawyers.
this happens because all the lawsuits are settled. either in court or out. it should be fought to the last thing and then go to the person and attorneys that file the suit to recover expenses. this would make everybody to think twice about frivolous lawsuit. the provblem i have seen is that the lawyers do not want to go after another lawyer. but this would solve the problem. in an example go to a hardware store and see a ladder disclaimer it even mention do not place in dogpile. i mean this is getting ridiculous and the lawyers are getting rich. that is my 2 cents
This is capitalism at its finest…….
I am 100% in favor of these lawsuits as long as their is an extra low percentage that the lawyers are allowed to declare as reasonable expenses.
I just got one myself the other day regarding an old Costco membership. You’ve got to be kidding me. The lawyers get $5.38 million. The offense? Costco dated renewal memberships from the day after the old ones expired and not the day that the renewals were paid. Better yet, this only applied to New York. You just know someone found an obscure state law unique to NYS that said they weren’t allowed to do that here.
What do the “victims” get? Anywhere from one to three month extensions to their memberships.
I’m all for class action lawsuits when it comes to the real deal: manufacturing defects, pharmaceutical companies improperly testing new drugs, etc. You know, things that have a material impact on LIFE. But the rest of this make me sick. Quick, somebody get me a lawyer.
It’s easy to take potshots at lawyers involved in class action settlements. It’s tempting to say lawyers get all the money and consumers get nothing. But as a lawyer (though not one of the Bluetooth lawyers) who brings consumer class actions, I have to say that those of you who have posted criticisms here really do not know what you’re talking about.
There are many reasons why settlements may be constructed and worded in a certain fashion. Spend more time talking to a lawyer or educating yourself about this topic, instead of shooting off snarky posts, and perhaps you might come to understand these settlements a little better.
In reply to consumer lawyer:
We don’t have a problem with constructive lawsuits in general, its the lawsuits where obviously no normal consumer actually complained. But a section in a lawfirm that specifically look for stupid suits to make money off of….this is how john edwards amassed his fortune, ‘working for the poor’ , yea right….just don’t lie to us a tell us its out of some b.s. responsibility for fellow citizens. Because you actually hurt the consumer by minimizing all lawsuits, whether well intentioned or not.
Also by raising costs to the companies who make or sell the products, that money has to come from somewhere, ther same consumer you defended so well out of ‘responsibility’ but received zero of the funds well have to pay for it on the back end, on the next purchased items from these companies.
Sir, don’t sit there at your computer and lie to us telling us its out of drive for truth and responsibility to the citizens that silly lawsuits like this are brought up. Its about making money, just say it with me now….IT’S ALL ABOUT THE. MONEY.
It ok to say it…its all good.
Consumer Lawyer, while there are many legitimate class action suits surely you are aware that there are also many frivolous ones as well. The reputation that class action lawyers and lawsuits have with the general public is not unearned and not simply the musings of the ill informed and uneducated.
Agree with the lawyer. We LOVE JKOTR. In its area of competence there is none better. This is not one of those areas. Blowing off steam about a complex legal matter is probably better diverted to cool info about new mobile devices and services, even for JK, our leader.
Also a lawyer occasionally involved with class actions, disagree entirely with “consumer lawyer.” To be sure, not all class actions are frivolous, and not all class counsel benefit from bringing them. Certainly not all settlements are bad, wrong, or evil. But you do not need J.D. to see that this lawsuit is probably silly, and these sorts of “consumer protection” class actions do nothing to benefit consumers except raise the cost of goods.
Class actions are horribly misused, and, in my view, that is because they are vile to begin with. The essential concept behind the class action is the same as punitive damages: the actual damage caused by wrongdoing, or the recoverable portion of that damage, is insufficient to encourage litigation and deter wrongdoing. Therefore we enhance the incentives to litigate, and the payoff for successful litigation, by allowing a small group of people to represent everyone who was injured, or may have been (and thereby increase the damages that may be recovered in the suit.)
There are a host of problems with this technique. One is that the rest of our system is designed to discourage litigation. Just one example – the federal rules of evidence privilege settlement negotiations, in order to lower the cost of and perceived risk of attempting to settle, and thereby limit the number of cases that actually get fully litigated. By the way, this works – 90%+ of cases settle without trial, which is typically touted as a good thing. Another example – most jurisdictions now have mandatory mediation for at least some classes of disputes, or a mechanism for requesting court-assisted settlement. Punis and class suits fly in the face of modern judicial policy.
Another (in my view larger) problem is that the civil system, and particularly the tort system, is not designed to punish wrongdoing. At its best, it is designed to shift the costs of certain conduct back onto the tortfeasors who commit the conduct (or else have the last best chance to avoid the damage). It is not about “fairness” or “justice” or “punishment” or “retribution” – those may be goals in making tort law, but they are not and should not be the goals in its enforcement. Those principles belong in the courts of equity and the criminal court.
In other words, if you think society would be better off if my car periodically interrupted my music to warn me not to lick my fingers and grab the battery terminals, lobby your state senators or the Highway Commission to make a law. Provide massive criminal penalties for BT headset manufacturers that fail to tell consumers to take off their headsets if their ears start to bleed. But don’t sue because a company failed to guess that some particular warning would be important to you. Such a suit is stupid, the lawyers who bring it are a blight, and the system that permits it is broken. Even a lawyer can see that.
Well said. Totally agree with you. If it so bad there should laws protecting the consumer, not any chance to sue because coffee was hot.
If you want job security, get a job as an audiologist. As someone suffering hearing loss most likely caused by playing and listening to “these speakers go up to eleven” music during the good old rock and roll days, I think we can be pretty sure we’re doing ourselves damage with all our headphones, etc. Ending up with a consumer warning that might be heeded by some users is good enough. At this point in our history, lawsuits seem to be the only way to get something approaching regulation in industry.
I received this also… and was nothing but ANGRY about this. It reeks of frivolity and the class gets absolutely nothing…. and why should they… nothing has happened! It might happen, but then I might poke my eye out with a toothpick… I didn’t see a warning on the toothpick box. It is the lawyers that make out in a grand way!
Now, for a lowly non-lawyer type like myself, it is very difficult to actually file an objection with the court. It seems that part of the rules in the notice require that all objections comply with filing rules of the US District Court for the Central District of CA. If those rules are not followed, then the objection is deemed invalid. Like I know those rules. So I need another lawyer to file an objection. How absurd. Well, in the end, I have decided to make efforts to file an objection. At least it will make me feel better.
I received one in the mail, I was ANGRY too. Thanks for publishing this insanity Mr. Kendrick so more people can see this frivolous lawsuit. I am glad to see there are more levelheaded, decent people in the world.