Lawyer in Dunkin’ butter case: $90,000 payout ‘not actually profitable’

The Boston Glove discusses unfair class action settlements with CEI's Center for Class Action Fairness founder Ted Frank. 

Legal experts say that such scenarios — where attorneys get a huge payout but their clients get little or no money — are far from unusual in class action cases.

And some decry the practice as being unfair.

“In general, this is a systemic issue with class actions, where lawyers structure settlements to benefit themselves rather than the class,” said Ted Frank, a lawyer and director of the Center for Class Action Fairness at the Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington D.C. “It’s a consistent problem.”

Frank said judges who must approve settlements in such cases sometimes approve seemingly lopsided agreements, despite laws designed to prevent attorneys from structuring settlements to benefit themselves more than the class.

“Judges should be giving these settlements more scrutiny,” Frank said.

Read the full article at The Boston Globe.