After an article called lawyer Ted Frank a "class action settlement scourge," he wrote on one of his several blogs that he should print that phrase on his business cards. The title bestowed by our sibling publication The Am Law Litigation Daily seems fair enough. Since he started his nonprofit Center for Class Action Fairness in 2009, Frank has filed challenges to 43 settlements in 39 cases. At press time, by his count he had won settlement improvements or attorney fee reductions in 25 challenges, and lost eight. In the process he’s established himself as a unique kind of objector to class action settlements one who rarely seeks attorney fees for himself, but who regularly objects to the fees that plaintiffs lawyers negotiate for themselves.
Some critics have argued that he simply hates class actions. "I’m not sure anyone really believes he’s in it for the reason he states that he cares about consumers," plaintiffs lawyer James Sabella told The Wall Street Journal in 2011, while defending a settlement with Sirius XM Radio against Frank’s objections. "He wants class actions to go away entirely." Frank maintains otherwise. A settlement "in which the class unambiguously is the main beneficiary" is okay, he says: "I don’t oppose plaintiffs attorneys recovering legal fees, but their recovery should be proportional to what they’ve achieved for the class." Frank adds, "The fundamental problem in class action settlements is a conflict of interest between class counsel and their clients." The court approval process for approving settlements and the legal test for determining a settlement’s fairness "doesn’t always adequately scrutinize the nature of that conflict," he says.
