Perhaps some people do value it that highly, but let's be honest, as with almost every class action lawsuit, this is about a couple of lawyers who saw an opportunity to make a lot of money by acting like a white knight for a lot of people who don't know they are or want to be a part of a lawsuit. The vast majority of those people that they're championing don't care one whit about being tracked for the purposes of anonymized analytics (which is what KissMetrics is all about).
Most of their arguments are a joke (with the exception of the browser controls circumvention, which I would say is Adobe's fault, and KissMetrics' use of the Adobe cookie to revive deleted cookies). All in all, I think this is a pure abuse of the justice system with a thin veneer of plausibility.
While I don't disagree that many class action lawsuits are lawyers looking for a pay day, I think there is still value in litigation like this.
Class action lawsuits help to ensure that defendants can't get away with doing a small amount of damage to each plaintiff, but a very large amount of damage as a whole. There simply would not be an incentive to bring this sort of litigation if not for this, and companies would likely get away with these kinds of only-slightly-harmful practices. By bringing this sort of class action, the damages can be large enough that the defendant is forced to rethink their actions and make a change in their behavior.
Without class action, the damages would be small enough that the company could ignore it (because so few people were suing), or the legal system would be flooded with an inordinate number of duplicate cases in order to bring an appreciable amount of damage to the defendants.
That said, it would be nice to see some sort of restriction on legal fees, or on who is allowed to bring class action suits (perhaps only consumer advocacy groups, as is true elsewhere in the world).
I think that might be a good solution (to have consumer protection/advocacy groups be the only ones who can bring forward class actions). As it is, many of them are promoted and put together by lawyers who have no actual interest in the case other than the large percentage of the settlement that they end up with.
Because it means that they will pursue cases irrespective of its usefulness to society, which means that many of these cases are actually net damaging to society. That is a problem.
Comments
Perhaps some people do value it that highly, but let's be honest, as with almost every class action lawsuit, this is about a couple of lawyers who saw an opportunity to make a lot of money by acting like a white knight for a lot of people who don't know they are or want to be a part of a lawsuit. The vast majority of those people that they're championing don't care one whit about being tracked for the purposes of anonymized analytics (which is what KissMetrics is all about).
Most of their arguments are a joke (with the exception of the browser controls circumvention, which I would say is Adobe's fault, and KissMetrics' use of the Adobe cookie to revive deleted cookies). All in all, I think this is a pure abuse of the justice system with a thin veneer of plausibility.
While I don't disagree that many class action lawsuits are lawyers looking for a pay day, I think there is still value in litigation like this.
Class action lawsuits help to ensure that defendants can't get away with doing a small amount of damage to each plaintiff, but a very large amount of damage as a whole. There simply would not be an incentive to bring this sort of litigation if not for this, and companies would likely get away with these kinds of only-slightly-harmful practices. By bringing this sort of class action, the damages can be large enough that the defendant is forced to rethink their actions and make a change in their behavior.
Without class action, the damages would be small enough that the company could ignore it (because so few people were suing), or the legal system would be flooded with an inordinate number of duplicate cases in order to bring an appreciable amount of damage to the defendants.
That said, it would be nice to see some sort of restriction on legal fees, or on who is allowed to bring class action suits (perhaps only consumer advocacy groups, as is true elsewhere in the world).
I think that might be a good solution (to have consumer protection/advocacy groups be the only ones who can bring forward class actions). As it is, many of them are promoted and put together by lawyers who have no actual interest in the case other than the large percentage of the settlement that they end up with.
And why is that a problem? I don't mind lawyers making money when they are doing something useful.
Because it means that they will pursue cases irrespective of its usefulness to society, which means that many of these cases are actually net damaging to society. That is a problem.