A bipartisan coalition of 19 state Attorneys General from across the country, filed a brief urging the United States Supreme Court to protect consumers from class action settlement abuse in a Google settlement appeal next term.
Attorneys General from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming have joined in the brief.
In the Google Referrer Header Privacy Litigation class action settlement appeal, Google settled a far-reaching consumer privacy case for $8.5 million, but consumers will not receive any of that money. Instead, more than $2 million will go to lawyers, and more than $5 million will go to five organizations that had nothing to do with the lawsuit, something that is called a cy pres-only settlement arrangement.
In the Amicus Brief, attorneys asked the Supreme Court to prohibit cy pres-only class action settlement arrangements, like the $8.5 million Google settlement at issue, which divert all the settlement money away from consumers. Brnovich also urged the Court to implement limits so that, to the extent cy pres is allowed in a class action settlement, the lawyers for the class cannot get fees based on amounts awarded to cy pres recipients, since they don’t produce a direct benefit to the consumers who are supposed to receive some relief as a result of the litigation.
The brief was filed in Frank et al. v. Gaos, et al., No. 17-961 (U.S.) as a “friend of the court.”