
The Lawyer Whose Clients Didn’t Exist - prostoalex
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/bp-oil-spill-shrimpers-settlement/609082/
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dcole2929
The story doesn't really paint any of these people in a good light. The real
question in my opinion, which the article does a poor job of addressing is at
what point, could Watt have dropped people from the suit without compromising
their ability to later file suit. It outlines that he basically knows the
40,000 number is bunk from very close to the beginning, but it's certainly
hard to imagine there were no mechanisms from which he could have cut people
out. Certainly seems from here like Watt pushed on in hopes he could get the
money and figure out the rest later, knowing he could throw the people who
sourced the clients under the bus if anything went left.

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H8crilA
Can someone tl;dr?

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fuzzybear3965
Expect some loss with this compression...

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill, a high-powered class-action
attorney hires a team of field agents to recruit disenfranchised gulf
fisherman as litigants.

The field agents established a network of local recruiters to outsource
clientele acquisition. Said agents bumble the solicitation of
clients/fisherman, accepting fraudulent documentation from per-head
subcontractors ($10 to $50 per litigant found).

So, high-powered attorney receives documentation for tens of thousands of
fisherman clientele to support his class action.... But, they don't exist.
Realizing this, he pursues the case anyway since abandonment disadvantages the
small fraction of clientele that are legitimate (in that they are unable to
litigate against B.P. in the future).

High-powered attorney wins the class action, ensuring to stipulate that no
recourse can be had in the event that the clientele are found to be non-
existent (the known case).

The U.S. government drags high-powered attorney and recruiting staff into
criminal court. He defends himself and establishes a defense claiming himself
to be a victim of his field agents.

Field agents are sentenced to many years in prison and high-powered attorney
is found not guilty by a jury of his peers.

You may need a TL;DR for this TL;DR.

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lonelappde
Wow, this is why lawyers have a terrible reputation. Profiting handsomely
while coconspirators rot in jail.

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xmprt
Maybe the article is painting him in this light but what other choice did he
have? If he dropped the suit then all the legitimate people wouldn't have any
recourse. The people who messed up were the field agents.

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phonon
He could have properly investigated the identity of the claimants at any time.
More like he didn't want to know.

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pseingatl
There is no need for these class action cases. Where there is a legitimate
class of injured plaintiffs, treat them under the worker's comp statutes.

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gamblor956
Class actions are cheap and efficient, especially where the alternative is
thousands of individual cases.

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worik
Perhaps it would be a good idea to read the article before commenting like
that.

Near the end it has this gem: "...Yale Law School professor emeritus Peter
Schuck, the author of Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the
Courts. While they can empower the so-called little guy to go after corporate
wrongdoers, mass torts are vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation, he
argues. Even when everything’s on the up-and-up, they’re “an extremely
inefficient way of compensating victims,” Schuck told me. They take a long
time to litigate, have high transaction costs (up to 40 percent of the total
outlay, according to Schuck), and can lead to unpredictable rewards."

So given the law professor calls class actions (mass torts) inefficient with
high transaction costs, what is the opinion "Class actions are cheap and
efficient..." based on?

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ceejayoz
Don’t these criticisms apply equally (if not more) to the alternative of
thousands of individual suits?

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gamblor956
They do. That one book is really about one country trying to sue another
country for the use of military weapons against enemy combatants that
knowingly and deliberately used civilian populations as human shields.

They should be suing their own government.

