Many consumer protection laws include the recovery of a specified amount of damages (often measured in the hundreds or thousands of dollars), rather than requiring plaintiffs to prove actual damages. When combined with the procedural device of the class action, however, aggregated statutory damages claims can result in liability exposure in the hundreds of millions—or even billions—of dollars on behalf of a class whose actual damages are often nonexistent.
Statutory damages and the class action mechanism serve very similar purposes. Statutory damages set a fixed dollar amount for recovery that a plaintiff can recover, providing a solution to the problem of actual damages being small or difficult to quantify. Making a company or individual liable for a specific amount of statutory damages for each violation creates a financial deterrent to behavior that a legislature wants to curtail and an a means to provide those harmed by such behavior to obtain relief. Similarly, class actions typically allow large numbers of individuals harmed in the same way to recover where nominal damages would make bringing individual lawsuits untenable.
When combined, however, statutory damages can be aggregated along a large number of consumers, leading to potential damages awards that bear no relation to the harm or damage that consumer protection laws seek to address. Additionally, the ability to aggregate statutory damages through the class action mechanism is highly susceptible to abuse. Statutory damages class actions often threaten companies and individuals with annihilating civil exposure for technical violations of laws that do not create any appreciable injuries to consumers, or that are far in excess of any actual injury. The enormous ex...
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...to be applied according to their literal terms when doing so achieves a result manifestly not intended by the legislature.”
Similarly, in Murray v. GMAC Mortg. Corp., a case brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), Judge Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit ruled that although there were serious due process concerns with a lawsuit that sought billions of dollars in aggregated statutory penalties for “technical” violations of the FCRA, the due process concerns should not impact whether or not to certify a class. He wrote that “[w]hile a statute remains on the book . . . it must be enforced rather than subverted. An award that would be unconstitutionally excessive may be reduced, but constitutional limits are best applied after a class has been certified. . .. Reducing recoveries by forcing everyone to litigate independently—so that constitutional bounds
Damages are a fundamental principle in the American legal system. However, a number of recent cases in the United States have sparked a debate on the issue, the most famous one being the “hot coffee lawsuit”1. In 1994, Stella Liebeck bought coffee at a McDonald’s restaurant, spilt it, and was severely burnt. She sued the McDonald’s company, received $160,000 in compensatory damages, and $2.9 million in punitive damages. A judge then reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. The final out-of-court settlement was of approximately $500,000. For many, this case is frivolous (meaning that the plaintiff’s prospects of being successful were low or inexistent), but it really highlights the question of excessive punitive damages compared to the damage suffered and its causes.
Liability in restitution with disgorgement of profit is an alternative to liability for contract damages measured by injury to the promisee.” (2011)
Margaret Fuller was one of the most influential woman of her time. She was a very intelligent woman that had concurred three languages by the age of thirteen. She used her knowledge to open the eyes of many people. She was a true Transcendentalist. She was very vocal about her views on gender roles of the nineteenth century even though they were not considered traditional. She challenged the conventional gender roles of the men and women. She was not afraid to tell women to fight for their natural rights. Her audience was composed of both men and women. She makes sure to point out that when she speaks of men, she is referring to both men and women. One of her greatest literature written was The Great Lawsuit. It was
Tort reformers believe that courts must reduce the ability of defendants’ liability in order to avoid economic decline. In the years to come, the proposals likely to generate the biggest dispute include malpractice and class-action reform, limits on noneconomic and punitive damages, and a legislative solution to asbestos legation (Rushmann, 2006). There are many lawsuits. But the frivolous lawsuits should not be taken seriously and not cost our courts and citizens time and/or money.
We may become subject to product liability claims, which could harm our financial condition and liquidity if we are not able to successfully defend or insure against such
...n when the manufacturer goes to great length to warn consumers against possible hazards of the product, these warnings are not always sufficient protection from failure-to-warn lawsuits. The manner in which each lawsuit is defended against can also provide a deterrent against such suits in the future.
A plaintiff is somebody that brings a case. In this case, it’s Ann Anderson, the Canes family ,Tombies, Sonas, Robins, and A Fieros in the film titled A Civil Action (1). There were 12 leukemia deaths over the past 15 years, 8 of them being children (1). Ann Anderson is just one of the victims that lost her son to leukemia. She open-mindedly wants to know if the water they were drinking had anything to do with it. There were complaints in the neighborhood that the water had a strange taste, consequently, she decides to gather the families that have lost loved ones. Jan Schlichtmann takes on this eight million dollar case. It forces Jan and his team to give up everything they have in order to win the case, including their house mortgages(1).
“When a court interprets a constitutional provision and applies that interpretation to a specific set of circumstances, the court is essentially
William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner. The Economic Structure of Tort Law. Harvard University Press, 1987.
... consumers can ask for a refund or replacement or even compensation if the losses are too huge (Business Government Australia, 2012).
Hence, caps take away the power of judges and juries, who hear the evidence for a given situation, to choose payment regarding each individual situation. Rather, it puts these choices in the hands of lawmakers, forsaking this nation's history of individualized justice for all. A cap is typically characterized by a dollar figure. Caps are only used after an individual or a company has been found liable for their harmful actions. They don't have anything to do with "frivolous" claims. They apply regardless of how much legitimacy a case has, or the degree of
Where compensation takes the form of a monetary award, it adequately satisfies the plaintiff for any financial harm caused . For example...
In order to analyze our “sue happy” society one must first find out, what actually is a lawsuit? A lawsuit is a legal action brought by a plaintiff, a person who claims to have been wronged, against a defendant, the person being sued. If a judge decides that a case has enough evidence to go to trial then the verdict may be decided by either a judge or a jury. Yet, 90 percent of cases reach a settlement out of court. (Cannell)
The U.S court system has numerous cases in it, they range from multi million dollar cases (including the bank crisis, or the car business for example) to less severe cases called torts. A tort is a legal term defined as “ A wrongful act that does not include breach of contract. This offense damages the injured parties property or reputation, leaving that party able to gain compensation.” (Dictionary.com) The book The King of Torts is about a man named Clay Carter. He has a stable job, it doesn’t pay as much as he wishes. He in the scheme of one week goes from making $100,000 a year to making $5,000,000 in one case. This is all because he filed something called a mass tort (also known as a class tort).
Damages – if the other party cause’s drastic damages that cost the other party or affect it negatively than the other party can sue and take them to court of law, and the court may claim that the affected party may be paid and be taken back to its original position as it was