Stuff You Should Know - How Class Action Lawsuits Work

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Class action lawsuits seem a little odd – a bunch of people get together for a sue-fest against somebody – but in the legal world they’re a practical way of handing huge wrongs. And! They keep justice just in their way. Learn all about them today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, legal Eagle Clark. There's Chuck.

Debra Winger. Man, that was gonna be Jerry's. Oh, okay. All right, well, Jerry can be Robert Redford. So Chuck, Debra Winger, Bryant, and then Jerry, Robert Redford, Roland. And this is Stuff You Should Know. I never saw that movie.

Really? Yeah, it's just one, you know, I was kinda too young for a legal procedural, I think, and then I just never caught up to it. Not just a legal procedural, a romance one too. Yeah, boring. I saw it a bunch of times when I was younger for some reason. I guess my mom must have been into it or something.

Now it's just a long for the ride. Right, exactly. Yeah, but it was good if I remember correctly. Great cast. Yeah, it was a good, I mean, you can't go wrong with either one of those two, you know? Wasn't there a third?

Legal Eagle's three, Olympus has fallen. I think it was. Wasn't there a third person in that, wasn't it a romantic triangle or am I just making that up? I don't know, I don't, I think you're looking at the last days of disco. I'm looking now, Daryl Hannah's on the cover, so. Oh yeah, she might have been.

Popped in for a tasteful nude, then she probably plays a big couple. She convulses on the floor. You know who she's married to, right? No. Neil Young. I didn't know that, I could totally see that now that you say it though.

Yeah, they're the reason that Neil Young and David Cross, or David Cross, that'd be funny. David Crosby don't speak to each other anymore. Why did David Crosby used to like Daryl Hannah? No, he's just a big jerk and he like said something about her in an interview that wasn't nice, like right when they got together. Geez, this is a problem.

Dead to me, he's a notorious jerk. I didn't even know that, but I could kind of see it. Yeah, he admits it. That's even worse. I think that's worse. People who are like, I'm just a jerk, deal with it. It's like, no, why don't you change your personality a little bit to conform a little better

to the rest of our expectations, you SOB? Well, let me rephrase that. And this is all coming from the great, great documentary about him, recent one. He admits it and has deeper regrets over how he treated people. Well, that's good. So he's an old man now too.

Yeah, he regrets his behaviors. That makes it easier to kick somebody when they're down. If they're like, deal with it, you can't bring them down to your level and kick them. But if they're like, I really regret everything, you'd be like, yeah, you should really rub it in. Especially if he's an old man. Sure, exactly.

So obviously today, Chuck, we're talking about class action lawsuits. I think anybody who could read the stuff you should know, tea leaves could have discerned that, or they could have just looked at the title of the episode. Yeah, you know, something that occurred to me while we were doing, but researching this, like most, or not all about most,

but many people listening to this show have maybe even unknowingly been a part of a class action lawsuit. Sure, I know, I have. I have too. I've gotten those little emails that say, you know, you got 75 cents coming to you from whatever. Right, like every bit of your personal information

was stolen in an Equifax breach. So Equifax is going to give you some identity theft protection. Right, or a discount, which is, that's always the rub. Yeah, a lot of people probably have been a part of a class action lawsuit, and you may not have paid attention to it. You may have gotten one of those things in the mail

and just been like, what is this, who cares? Or even if you read the fine print, you might have been like, this is literally not worth my time and responding for. But there's a lot of things that happened in the, by virtue of you not responding to whatever card or something you saw, or even like an ad on TV apparently,

qualifies as notifying somebody that, hey, you may be a member of this class action lawsuit. Yeah, this kind of came up recently in my life and that I've mentioned before that I'm on a Facebook page of a community in rural Georgia, where I have some land in rural Georgia and there are some Donald Trump supporters that were pretty upset that were asking

if they could bring a class action lawsuit to overturn the election, presumably because they don't like the result, but I didn't get involved that didn't jump in there and say, you know, you like what kind of damages are you gonna prove or whatever. Sure. Cause I think it would be interesting to try and prove

emotional and psychological damage for an election result. That would be an interesting case. But that is, I mean, it would be like most of the cases around the election, it turns out. But with that though, like you've kind of hit upon a few things here, the idea that there's a group of people who were wronged in some way, in similar ways who on their own

might not get anywhere with the case, but collectively like pooling together their resources or the multiple harms done, like taking those individual harms and turning them into one big mushy pile, that's the basis of a class action lawsuit. And it really kind of gets to the heart of why they exist. And that is that a lot of times you're suing

like a big giant corporation with enormous resources at their disposal that can fight you all day long until not only does the lawsuit go away, but you don't have any money left. And when you really look at it at the end of the day, you might have really just been after 100 or 1,000 or even 10,000 or even $100,000 worth of damages, which might seem like a lot to you,

but might actually be less than the amount that you would spend on that case. And so when you face those kinds of odds that kind of challenge, you're just not going to file that suit, any reasonable person wouldn't file a lawsuit like that. But the problem is, if that's the case, then that means that giant corporations

who are doing ill stuff can just keep doing ill stuff, which is a new phrase I'm working on. I'm taking it out for a walk right now. I think the beastie boy is going that term. Okay, well then this is an homage to the B-boys. But the idea that if people are just gonna let them get away with it because they can't afford the court fees, that's a problem, which is one of the big things

that is one of the big benefits that class action suits provide, is you can take all those separate people, put them together, and now all of a sudden you have a formidable opponent. Yeah, and it's obviously a part of civil law as opposed to criminal law, where I mentioned you have to have some sort of injury.

It could be physical, it could be emotional, psychological, obviously financial, and it's what's known as a device in civil litigation, and all that means is sort of that it doesn't really, it's sort of the same thing as any other civil case, but it just allows multiple people to take part. And we'll go over all the little minor differences, but it's sort of like treating that big body of people

as a single plaintiff, and in fact, they do have to even have a representative plaintiff. Like it can't be all Volkswagen owners versus Volkswagen. It would be, and of course we'll talk about that real case, but I'm just making this up. It would be Josh Clark versus Volkswagen, and then Josh Clark would have a million angry Germans standing behind him.

Do I win? In this theoretical lawsuit? Tell me, what's the outcome? I shouldn't have picked Volkswagen, because that was a real case that we'll talk about, but let's say it was, oh, I don't know, a Ugo. Josh Clark versus Ugo. Okay.

Remember those cars? Yeah, sure. I don't think Ugo was trying to advertise itself as anything but Ugos. That was their whole shtick. They were super cheap. You don't see those on the road much anymore, do you? Oh no.

I think after just a couple of years, you stop seeing those on the road. But yeah, you have a representative plaintiff or a lead plaintiff, and theirs is the name that appears on the case, even though, and we'll learn later too, that they in fact also, they get a little bump, get a little extra money for being the lead plaintiff.

Yes, they do get a little, because they're the ones who have to go through all this stuff, they might have to show up to court, they're the ones who have to coordinate with the lawyers, they're the ones actually suing, but the thing is, is if you show up and say, I am a, we'll take a recent example. I use, I'm a woman here in this situation.

I have a vagina, and every day for 50 years, I've been using Johnson and Johnson's baby powder on my vaginal region, and as a result, I have ovarian cancer, and the doctors have said, yeah, talcum powder is really bad for you. Johnson and Johnson's known this forever, but they just didn't tell anybody. So I want to sue Johnson and Johnson,

and the legal offices that I walk into and say this to, the first of all, the lawyer's gonna jump up and click his heels, and then say, I'm very sorry that this is happening to you, but the lawyer will probably think, you know, there's a lot of people who use Johnson and Johnson's baby powder, I wonder if there's anybody else like you, we'll start to do research, and all of a sudden,

your one lawsuit is going to include a lot more people, and will probably become certified as a class action lawsuit, but you, the person who initially filed this, will remain that representative plaintiff. Yeah, boy, I gotta say, that story had a lot of emotional peaks and valleys. Thank you, I'm doing much better now, by the way.

Good, I'm glad, everything's okay down there. Thank you for the well wishes, yeah. And you know, it does usually, but not always, because there are also cases like Enron, which we'll talk a little bit about, but a lot of times it involves product liability, when Bridgestone, Firestone had stuff going on there in the early 1990s, and I guess for a decade,

the US came down and the judge said, from anyone who had a car owned, or at least 91 through 2001, if you had a Ford Explorer during those years, then you are part of this class, they call that the class, and then the attorney who represents that class, and we'll talk about how they get selected, they are many times referred to as class council,

which sounds very much like some middle school title that you would run for or something, but whenever we say class council, just think that's the attorney representing all these people. Right, you're the class. Yeah, so you wanna take a break and then talk a little bit about the history of this stuff?

Yeah, let's do it. Okay. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, cause you'll wanna be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

So, Chuck, you said that class action lawsuits are a type of civil law, right? Which is not criminal law. But even more specifically than that, because they're a part of civil law, they're actually based on common law, which is the legal body that's been formed over the centuries starting in England.

And even further back than that, it turns out the Vikings are really the first court that was ever set up in Europe. That they actually started a lot of legal precedent that made its way over to England, that in turn made its way over to America. So, helmet tip to the Vikings for all that. But common law is like the sum

of all the judicial decisions made over those centuries that set precedent that was built on and expanded on and refined. That's common law. And common law is the basis of, originally, of hearing these kinds of cases, which are class action lawsuits. Yeah, and these, they didn't call them class action suits

in 1125, but they had them. And it wasn't thousands of people against a tire company. It was a few people. But in England, they allowed a handful of people to get together occasionally in the village. And maybe, I'm not sure, I didn't really find why exactly they did this. Initially, my guess would just be

efficiency of the court, maybe, early on. Yeah, which is sort of how it still is in a lot of ways, rather than trying thousands of cases or even hundreds of thousands of cases. You can just get everyone together in one room. And that's what they did in England. They allowed a few people to file a single complaint against the court.

And this kind of carried over over the years, eventually into colonial America, along with some other stuff dealing with law. Like you said, a lot of it sort of, some didn't stick, some did. Yeah, no, there was like a period, apparently, from about the middle of the, I guess about the 1500s, no, the 1400s

to the middle of the 19th century, where this just kind of went away in England. But it persisted in colonial America and then carried on and then went back to England and found purchase in about the middle of the 19th century in England's equity courts, which is a specific kind of court. It's now part of regular civil court now.

But for a little while, it was its own thing, where if say like you hired a tinsmith to make a gravy boat for you in like 1758, you would take that guy to civil court if he gave you one that was like, only half of a gravy boat. You couldn't hold gravy in it. So what are you gonna do with this thing?

It's totally useless. So you take the tinsmith to court. Well, you would probably expect money for damages. The money that you gave him returned to you, civil court would handle that. If you wanted to say make the tinsmith finish the job to complete this gravy boat, then you would probably take him to equity court.

Equity court was court that had to do with everything except monetary damages or criminal court. It was the creative kind of court, where it really kind of called on a judge's fairness and imagination to solve whatever problem was brought before it. And this, these equity courts, like we said, or like I said, were eventually fused

into regular civil court, but they are where our understanding, like the modern understanding of class action lawsuits were born. Get some of that 18th century gravy. Man, I love gravy. I don't care what century it's from. That's a good band name too.

So the problem with equity courts even early on is that there was really no kind of codified procedure for everything, especially as these cases got bigger and bigger as far as people grouping up. There was no standard procedure. And one of the biggest challenges with that, or I guess biggest controversies, was whether or not people that weren't a part

of that case technically, but were still a part of it because they had the wagon wheel made by the local townsmith that was faulty, whether or not they signed up or not for that case, whether they were bound by that decision. And it's a little counterintuitive to think about that. Like who cares if Goodie Smith isn't a part of this case? Maybe he doesn't care that his wagon wheel is faulty or not.

But what this does, if you look at it on the other side, is Goodie Smith can't, like once they settle this thing, Goodie Smith can't come along and then say, well, I want to see you separately. So then Goodie Smith couldn't come around later, or I guess until they changed it. He could come around later and sue again, but they had to work all this out.

They were like, that's not fair. You can't have this big civil case, have someone technically be a part of it, but not assigned to it, and then later on try and get their own separate damages. Right, but I mean, that's I think how it was for a good, almost a century, a little over a century, where you could say like,

I didn't have anything to do with this thing. Goodie, by the way, is short for good wife. So it's like Mrs. Smith. Well, I was just kidding around anyway. So yeah, but like the ninth grade crucible reader in me could not just let that pass. Remember that play? I do.

I love it. So the thing is like for a good century, like if you, even if you were considered somebody who would be a member of that class, if you hadn't signed onto this lawsuit, you could come back around and say, I didn't have anything to do with that. Like I want to sue you myself.

And that did kind of make things unwieldy because one of the purposes nowadays for filing a class action lawsuit, at least as far as like the defendant, like say the big corporation is concerned, is to just settle this once and for all. And so eventually they came up with something called Rule 48, which started to kind of include,

it was like the birth of the rules for class action lawsuits. And Rule 48 morphed into Rule 23. Rule 23 eventually in 1966 said, you know what, we're just going to say this. If you qualify as a member of a class action class, even if you have nothing to do with this, if you don't sign on,

you're considered bound to the decision, which means if you, if like the people suing these people lose, you can't go back and sue them again and try yourself. You're bound by that decision. And in 1966, they said, well, how are we going to do this? And they said, well, we need to just notify people, give people the option to say,

I don't want to have anything to do with this suit because I do want to sue these people on my own. And as long as you give them that option, the whole thing seems pretty fair. Yeah, 1937 was when the Supreme Court first adopted these rules of civil procedure and the beginnings of Rule 23. And this is when they sort of just dissolved

a lot of the separation between the law courts and equity courts, but it was until 66 that they finally realized that was an issue. And they also, I mean, it's a pretty, it's a pretty dense thing, Rule 23. There was a lot that went on. Yeah.

And then that was amended again in 2005 with the Class Action Fairness Act, which among other things said that, if it's over five million bucks, then this has got to go to federal court, federal district court, because that's too much money. Another one of the things

from the Fairness Act of 2005 is it laid out some other criteria aside from the five million bucks. It said that any case involving plaintiffs or defendants from like a bunch of different states, so if it's like all across the country basically, and they call that diversity jurisdiction, then the federal court can actually,

it has to go to federal court under that case. Right, and then also if it's 100 people are over, it typically, or 100 plaintiffs are over, it typically goes to federal court. And I get the impression federal courts is basically like, we're a little more equipped for the complexities and intricacies of a class action lawsuit. That's the impression I have, do you?

Yeah, I mean, I think they're just set up for it. I imagine it would be tough for a state court to handle a case like Firestone, Bridgestone, with that many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, I don't know how many eventual plaintiffs there were, but that's a lot of tires. So I think that's true, but I also feel like this whole thing,

smacks of federal courts is basically being like, you know, let's just admit it, that state courts are run by hayseeds and yokels. That's what it smells like to me. There's definitely the undercurrent. Federal court rules, state court jewels. That's right. So that rule 23, which again, is very dense as you said,

but it's also ominous sounding, if you ask me. Rule 23 sounds like it's gonna mess you up pretty good. But it's basically the body of understanding for class action lawsuits that's been established, you know, since the 30s up to 2005 with the class action fairness act, like you were saying. And if you read it, you can basically get a pretty good idea of what has to happen for a class action lawsuit

to go forward. Apparently each state has its own rules, but as far as the federal districts are concerned, rule 23 is it. And the first thing you have to do is you have to become certified as a class. Like your lawsuit has to go from, it's just me suing, you know, Exxon for the oil spill

to I've got all these other neighbors and cannery owners around here who are all affected by this oil spill. And we think we have a good case against Exxon. And very importantly, we all have the same kind of harm. We have a common complaint, which is Exxon spill a bunch of oil, messed up our livelihood and our lives.

And we all, you know, because we all have the same kind of case, the defense Exxon could mount the same defense against all of these complaints. So we would probably be certified as a class. Yeah, like, you know, the common defense in the case of like Aaron Brockovich, that movie. I can't remember the name of the company that was the defendant, but the defendant.

The, who was it? Pacific Gas and Electricity. The one who keeps setting off wildfires out in California. So they couldn't then have a defense, one defense against like a certain number of people or a certain kind of person in town, let's say. It's probably more applicable. And then another for another kind of person in town.

They had to mount a common defense. It's basically, I think, all about equity or making things equitable among kind of for both sides. Yeah, for sure. Which I thought was pretty interesting. And only, you know, you have to get certified in only 20 to 40% of lawsuits that are filed as class action, even get certification to begin with.

Yeah. And the reason that was lower than I thought, but I guess it also makes sense. What I could not find is this Chuck. What happens to the original lawsuit, the original plaintiff, if they're not certified as a class or as a class action lawsuit? We can probably just go sue on your own,

I don't know. I don't know. I cannot find out. The way that I couldn't find out was the case that first piqued my interest about that was Dukes versus Walmart. I think it was Dukes at all versus Walmart, which turned out to be the biggest class action class

ever created. It consisted of one and a half million women who had been employed. It's bigger than the US military, by the way, but they were every woman who was employed by Walmart between, I think, any time after 1998. And the whole lawsuit was that Walmart was basically promoting men more quickly

and giving men more resources to advance into management positions than women. And the idea was that if you were a woman, you were harmed by this equally. So it made sense that this would get certified as a class action suit because any woman who worked for Walmart would have been harmed by not having the opportunity to advance.

But then Walmart argued and said, well, there's no national or company-wide policy that says you can't advance women, you can advance men more quickly, that all of these advancement decisions are made up of thousands and thousands of local decisions. So since there were so many different decisions that affected all these different women,

this class doesn't make sense. And they actually won, it went all the way to Supreme Court and Supreme Court said, Walmart's right, this doesn't make sense as a class action suit because all of the harms could have been for different reasons carried out by different people. But the reason that does make sense to have that, that certification clause, is because any defendant

has a right to defend themselves against any accusation in court. And so if everybody's accusing them of the same harm, then it makes sense of certifying them together as a class. If there's different harms that aren't quite the same, then the defendant should be able to defend against that accusation, that accusation, that accusation,

and you shouldn't lump all those people together into a whole class. Right, so the judge is in charge of defining the class. And like we said, it's gotta be specific to the problem at hand. It can't be all bridged on tire owners. It was, well, unless it's all bridged on tires, but it turned out it was just this one tire

on this one car. And so you have to really define that. Like if you had this car during these years, then you are part of this class. Right. And from that point, it has the notification that we talked about has to take place, whether it's, you know, you've seen TV commercials

probably to have this kind of thing. Yeah. You see advertisements in the newspaper, you probably get a mailer. It depends on how broad it is. They're not gonna do a TV commercial if they don't need to because that costs money, obviously. And that's an expense, but they're gonna notify everyone

in pretty quick order because what they want is for everybody to know they're a part of this class that's a part of that class, and whether or not you wanna opt in or out. And if you opt out and you are within the scope of that class, you can do so if you want to. If it's, I'm not sure why anyone for these like kind of small things that seem to happen a lot

would opt out. Right. I think they probably just count on people ignoring that kind of thing. Well, yeah. And getting their check for $5 in the mail. Sure, for literally not doing anything. Yeah, you can opt out if you're, I don't know,

if you're a person who's just like, I don't want my name on any list and I don't wanna be a part of any, you know, if you're kind of a paranoid type as far as the government and court cases go, you may wanna opt out just to not be a part of something so small, who knows. Well, I think the reason that they include it

is because if you are some, let's say you are somebody whose house was washed away by the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez. But the class action lawsuit was everyone who was affected by the oil. So it would include people whose houses lived or whose houses were a mile away whose front yards got covered in oil.

Well, you'd be like, wait a minute, whatever they're gonna get is nothing like what I need, the damages that I'm seeking. So I'm gonna opt out. And because they can't, yeah. I mean, there's tons of real reasons to opt out. I'm talking about the $5 check coming from the credit card company.

Sure, but I'm saying like, they can't differentiate who's getting that mailer from who's not, which is why they put the onus on the person. Getting that mailer, seeing that TV commercial to say, oh, I need to opt out because I need to sue them on my own. I can't be part of this class

because when that settlement is reached and they say everybody's gonna get $5 for the trouble, that's what you got for your house being washed away. You know what I mean? Yeah. So then the judge is actually gonna appoint the counsel, which is different than how it usually works. The judge is gonna look at this and say,

and this is for, I think for defense only, right? I guess the judge can change the plaintiff, but it's typically the lawyer who actually files the case. I think it's unusual for the judge to overrule that unless it's someone who just doesn't have the responsibility or maybe that kind of background. Sure, yeah. I think like if somebody walked in

with the Johnson and Johnson complaint and the lawyer was just like a local ambulance chaser, they probably would get replaced with like a larger national firm that had the resources or the understanding that had like contacts in like the professional witness field as far as like medic medicine and cancer is concerned. Like that guy just wouldn't have the resources.

So he might be changed. But yeah, I'm guessing it's probably rare, but the point is that the judge has the ability to decide who is the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the class action. Yeah, I think it's probably more rare because lawyers understand this and they probably wouldn't file if they knew that they would be replaced

unless it's just to get it going and they know they're gonna be replaced. Like, and what was the breaking bad spin of Better Call Saul? When they, I think in like season two or something, when they figure out that the nursing home is taking advantage of the seniors overcharging them, like the first thing that Saul did was go to the larger firm and say like, we need to partner up

because he knew he couldn't handle it himself. That's what I'm guessing happens. Yeah, and then I didn't see Better Call Saul, but that sounds right to me. Oh, you didn't? No. It's pretty good. It's not breaking bad, but it doesn't seek to be breaking bad.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I've heard a lot of people sit like it better. I could see that. It's a different show. And then eventually the judge, and again, if you haven't noticed, and it's sort of like in the early days, the judge has a lot of, a lot more say in class action cases

than a lot of other kinds of cases. Really making a lot of decisions that they don't get to decide in other kinds of cases. In this case, one of the final things they get to decide is the distribution of damages. And they use other people for insight. They develop a plan with people on their team, but they develop this plan to distribute

whatever monetary damages, if it's $3 billion, they're gonna figure out how to approve that settlement and how to distribute that settlement, including, and this is a very key thing, as we'll see later, including how much those attorneys are gonna get paid. Right. So you wanna take a break and then come back

and talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages of class action suits? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikulur, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been

trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet

and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So one of the big advantages, obviously something we already mentioned, a lot of people, there's power in numbers. A lot of people is more significant than one person. And a lot of people pooling their resources is more significant.

Lawsuits cost a lot of money. And in many, many cases, it is not worth it for someone to go after a company for, you know, you kind of just have to do the math. Like how much is this going to cost me? What's the potential payout? Is it worth the risk? Whereas if you can band together with a bunch of other people,

it's a huge, huge advantage. Right. And one of the other advantages is the more people you have, the more damages are going to be awarded if the plaintiffs win, which means you're going to start attracting increasingly higher caliber lawyers to your cause, who could be your class counsel.

And the reason why is because in cases where you're seeking damages, lawyers often don't get paid unless they win. But if you win, then the lawyers get a big fat payday out of it. So the bigger the class, the better the law firm or legal team representing that class is probably going to be, at least more experienced, you know? Yeah, for sure. Another huge advantage is that you're going to get your case heard.

If individual cases, they go first come, first serve. So if an individual brings a big lawsuit and they win, that company might be out of business before you can even get your suit going. Right. And if you're part of a class action lawsuit, it's going to make sure that everybody gets their piece of the pie, basically. Exactly.

So there's a lot of reasons to do this. Another one, too, is it makes sense for corporations. They have an incentive to try to settle fairly with a class action suit because it will handle, it'll make this big years long, sometimes decade long problems go away, finally, once and for all. Yeah, and there's a lot of press that comes along with a class action suit. Yeah. Far more press than an individual case.

So it definitely behooves the defense to try and get these things wrapped up quickly because it's just bad news for them. Yeah, and on the other side of that same coin chuck, that large amount of press that gets generated by these big, big cases also kind of keeps corporate malfeasance in line. You know, it makes the company, it probably does more than if we didn't have such things as class action suits. But that's one of the theoretical byproducts.

How about that? Yeah, I got some property to show you here. Is it called the Brooklyn Bridge? Yeah, it's wonderful. So there are some problems with class action suits. They're not the candy land that we've described them as entirely. Instead, there's a lot of frivolous class action suits that have been filed over the years by lawyers who are looking to make a fast buck

in part using that bad press as a threat. Like, do you really want this to be, you know, to get dragged out in court? Just go ahead and settle. And, you know, I'm the lawyer. I'll take my big fat cut. And that's a big problem, actually. I mean, that's a big perceived problem, too, that class counsel walk away, you know, whistling and laughing all the way to the bank while the individual members

are just getting five bucks for their problems, even though they're the ones who had the thing befall them in the first place. Yeah. And also, you know, if you choose, like, let's use that Exxon example. If you get bad legal advice and your house was destroyed more than other people's property and you don't opt out, you can't then say, oh, well, you know, I only got this much. My whole house was destroyed. I really want to bring a lawsuit again.

Yeah. You can't do that. No. Unless you opt out. So that is a disadvantage that you, that's sort of your one shot, basically, at any compensation. Yeah. I think the rule of thumb is if you didn't even know that this wrong had befallen you, it's probably not that big of a deal and you're not going to want to opt out

because then that means you have to hire your own lawyer and go through the trouble of suing somebody, which is never pleasant or fun. Totally. So, like I was saying, like, those class lawyers are a favorite target of tort reformists and critics because if the plaintiffs win, the judge rules in the plaintiff's favor, one of the things the judge will do is figure out what the compensation is for the lawyer is going to be. A lot of times that comes out of the settlement, right? Like, if everybody gets $10 billion, the judge will say,

well, you attorney who led this case in your law firm and your legal team, you're going to get this fee. And I was reading up on it and it sounds like it's fairly arbitrary. There's no good rule of thumb. And in fact, lawyers who represent class actions may actually get a lower percentage fee than they would if they were representing somebody on an individual basis. But the thing is these payouts can be so huge that even if it's a really small percentage, it's going to be just this incredibly large amount in real numbers. And so a lot of people are like, that guy didn't earn that.

They didn't deserve that, especially when they find out that, you know, a million people got a coupon for half of a free tire from Firestone for having deadly tires on their car for 10 years. Yeah, those are, and they, you know, they tried to rectify that in part of the CAFA, the Class Action Fair Intersect of 2005 with these coupon settlements. Those really rub me the wrong way. It wasn't a class action suit, but there was something involved. At one point, I was a season ticket holder for the Atlanta Falcons.

And I can't remember what the deal was now. It wasn't a class action suit, but there was something to where they wronged the season ticket holders in some financial way. Terrible playing. We should have run a class action suit for the past 35 years. Those North Georgia people would join it. Yeah, exactly. But they did that coupon thing and they were like, well, because of whatever it was,

this upcoming season, season ticket holders will get 25% off anything from the Falcons merch store. Oh, no. And that just really rub me. It's like, because they're just, you're spending more like the people that fall for that. Right. Or just giving them even more money. That's a big criticism is that it establishes or keeps established an ongoing commercial relationship between the person who wronged you and you, the person suing them.

And that is a big criticism. Some people say a good reply to that is just have cash settlements. However, you could have a whole product settlement like rather than you having a coupon for some percentage off, so you still have to give them money. They say, we'll give you the jersey of your choice free and clear and you never have to see us again. Or maybe even like from the NFL.com store doesn't even have to be like a Falcons jersey. That's a solution to that too.

But one of the big problems was lawyers who were representing these coupon cases, they were taking a percentage of the entire value of the coupons. Of all the coupons. Right. And so what Kafa in 2005 or six sought to change was saying like, you really shouldn't do that because a lot of people don't actually redeem that. So you shouldn't get a percentage of the people's coupons who are never going to redeem that coupon.

You should get a portion of the coupons that are going to be redeemed. And that is just as hard figuring out how many coupons are going to be redeemed as hard as it sounds from what I understand. Yeah. There's one case in 2013 that you sent over that was pretty interesting. There was a teenager, his name was that guy who measured his subway sandwich, his foot long. Wait, he was Australian.

So say it in Australian. He was that guy. Nice. And he measured his foot long and it was only 11 inches long and he took it to attorney Jackie Childs. And then Jackie Childs didn't take the case and so the kid went away and then another kid measured his sandwich and his name was, well, actually, and he actually got this thing taken to court because he didn't have a 12 inch sub on his, from his subway sandwich.

It baked up a little bit short. Yes. And that was an actual case. Of course, I'm kidding around about those names, but although I wish I wasn't. The attorneys there were going to get over a half a million dollars in fees for what ended up being no payout whatsoever, just subway saying we'll make these things bake up to 12 inches now. Well, subway even said we can't guarantee that.

We cannot. They're like bread doesn't bake in exactly the same way. It's just, that's not how it works. And the court even tended to agree with that. But the point was no one was going to get anything, not even a free six inch sub, nothing. A free inch. Yeah. Not even a free inch.

You're just going to get, you know, subway will stay in business, but these lawyers were going to get a half a million dollars and the judge is like, you know, I forget this. We're just going to dismiss this entire case. That's right. Jackie Childs was very disappointed. There was also a similar, a similar one when, when the center for science and the public interest hired some lawyers to sue Coca-Cola who owned vitamin water at the time. Vitamin water used to have this hilarious ad campaign where it promised all these ridiculous

health benefits that any reasonable person knew were not true. And they weren't suing for that. They were actually suing because vitamin water didn't disclose how much sugar it had in it. Even though it was ridiculous health claims, it was still kind of purporting to be healthy. And these, the center for the science and the public interest was like, this is not healthy at all. And so they sued Coca-Cola didn't do anything, but stopped, I think advertising the way that they were, but those lawyers still got $2.73 million in fees, even though no one else got

anything. 32 grams of sugar in vitamin water. Yeah. I believe it. Crazy. Tastes delicious. I don't, I don't, I didn't know it had sugar in it. That's, I'm offended.

That's why they got sued. And, you know, there have been some very famous civil class action suits over the years. The largest ever, obviously, were the tobacco settlements. And that was by tenfold next to the second highest one, tobacco settlements. And I don't think it's over yet even $206 billion so far from that 1998 decision, 46 states, the attorney generals from 46 states were involved. And they obviously couldn't pay that out all at once. But what they were ordered to do was pay out for medical costs for smoking related illness

over the course of 25 years. The next highest was the BP spill for $20 billion. Wow. Volkswagen comes in at number three with $14.7 billion. And that one was pretty significant in that it wasn't a coupon payout. It was, it was a pretty good restitution, I think, in that they said, you know what, we will actually buy back, we'll fix your car for nothing, or we will buy back your car or end your lease with no penalty.

Right. And this is when Volkswagen cheated the software to try and cheat US emissions tests. Big, big scandals. So wrong. It was a big scandal. There's plenty of that are still, like, unfolding as we speak, like the Johnson and Johnson talcum powder one. If you watch Svenguli or anything else on Mi TV, you're probably well versed in the

Boy Scout of America sex abuse case that's ongoing. Yeah. Apparently, my brother was one of the first plaintiffs in that case. Oh, I think I remember you talking about that. Yeah. Now there's like 70,000 members of that class and growing. And then there's, if you've ever heard that ad for mezzo book, that's actually a mesothelioma guide that you will get sent to you by the lawyer of that class action settlement who's

still looking for plaintiffs against the asbestos manufacturers. So there's still plenty ongoing. Like now that we've talked about this, it'll be like that Beider-Meinhoff thing where you'll see class action ads on TV all the time now. Yeah. I mean, Enron was a big one. Remember Finfin, the diet drug? Oh, yeah.

That was a big one. That was a $3.8 billion payout. The silicon breast implants, that was a big payout. Yes. But that one, from what I understand, was total BS. It was based on medical hysteria and later science backed up the company's claims that they had nothing to do with, I think it was connective tissue disorder. Oh, interesting.

The science, nobody was carrying out the science. It was all basically paid testimony for the plaintiffs who were not necessarily even scientists. On the other side, nobody had any science and then science came later on, but it was after the settlement had been reached for billions of dollars. Wow. Did they demand it in my bag? That one's a bit of a scam, it turns out. Did they get it back?

I don't think so. Probably not. That's not how it works. I don't think so. A reverse class action suit. Right. Yeah, it's one company suing millions of people. You got anything else?

I got nothing else. All right. Well, if you want to know more about class action lawsuits, just watch me TV. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey guys, this is another coincidence email. And this one, we get a lot of these, like, hey, I was listening to the show when there was a tornado near me or whatever on tornadoes. But I thought this one was special.

Hey guys, I was listening to the Fort Knox episode in the listener letter about wetlands and happening to be at a wetland. I might share, I've had two very random coincidental things. A few years back, I was driving into the small town, into a small town in southwest Colorado where I live. And one of you mentioned a penny farthing. If you don't know what a penny farthing is, dear listener, it is the bicycle with that giant, giant front wheel and the tiny little back wheel from the 19th century, I guess.

Yeah, early 20th one of the two. I glanced over to the bike lane and sure enough, there was a guy riding a penny farthing. That is the most amazing thing I've heard in a long time. I've never seen one in real life, even. I don't think I have. I think I've seen an antique in the store or something like that, but I've never seen somebody riding. Although, this would not be nearly as amazing if the person turns out to be riding from

Brooklyn. Because I'm sure that's a pretty common sight. From Brooklyn to Colorado, that'd be something else. Yeah, I guess so. But what are the chances this guy's listening to that? That's amazing. It is, astounding. And I mean, why were we even talking about penny farthings in the first place, you know?

It's a good word. Sure. It was the first time I had seen one of those in that town. I've lived in for 25 years. This was this summer, after dropping off some clients to put on your episode about ice climbing, just as I was driving out of town to a mecca destination for ice climbers around the world. It's a little less impressive. I like that.

Sure. Yeah, I do too. And that is from Sean in Telluride, Colorado. Very nice, Sean. Thank you for the first anecdote. The second one, thanks for nothing. If you want to get in touch with us like Sean did and tell us your best anecdote, we want to hear it.

You can get in touch with us via email at stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.