https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/11/27/velveeta-mac-and-cheese-lawsuit/
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Lawyer has too much time on his hands.
Given how much money he’s made from successful class-action lawsuits, not really.
Money or no money, it’s not how I would choose to spend my life.
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Make a good living making big corporations pay for lying to their customers? Seems like more fun than what I lot of people I know do.
Sure, if that’s where your bar is set for “lying.” Mine’s a little higher than that.
This lawsuit’s a bit sillier than most of his, such as the 120 he’s filed over false claims that products contained vanilla, but it’s still a lie. They could just as easily say “ready in as little as five minutes” or whatever the truth is.
Personally I’m all for draconian truth in labeling laws.
Run for office. You won’t be the worst person trying it.
In theory, what you say makes sense. In practice, many consumer class actions lack merit, and consumers end up paying higher prices to offset companies’ costs of litigation and compliance lawyers. And lawyers on both sides make lots of money.
That said, some class actions do have merit and are the only way for people to vindicate their rights.
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In practice, many corporations will cheat, lie, and sell products they know to be harmful to their customers. Obviously a lawsuit over a trivial matter such as a microwave cup-o-diabetes not being ready in the 3.5 minutes claimed on the package is relatively silly, but class-action lawsuits are nevertheless one of the few constraints on American corporations’ predatory behavior (much of which world would be criminal in countries with stronger consumer protections).
Prices are set by the market. Companies that have to pay judgments for lying about their products can’t charge more than their competitors. They just make less profit, or ideally go out of business.
Corporate staff lawyers don’t make nearly as much money off of class-action lawsuits as the private attorneys who file them.
The reality is that every big company is sued each year in a large number of class actions and other lawsuits. It is impossible for any company, no matter how noble-minded, to avoid being sued. Do a Google search for “[company] class action lawsuit.” Put in whomever you like.
It is naive to think that all this litigation isn’t reflected in the price of goods and services.
Class action suits don’t cost companies anything if a judge can’t find a factual basis on which to certify them. Lots of them don’t get past that step. This one might not, given that the lead plaintiff continued to buy the product after she knew it took longer than 3.5 minutes to cook.
Companies end up in litigation because they lie to and cheat their customers. In the US, they mostly get away with it to their profit, outweighing the minor cost of dealing with lawsuits.
“There are a lot of people that may feel this is just a little fibbing and not really a case and I get that. But we are striving for something better,” Wright said in his email. “We want corporate America to be straightforward and truthful in advertising their products. My firm also represents clients in what most would say are more compelling cases (arsenic in baby food, etc.) but we don’t feel corporations should get a pass for any deceptive advertising. The consumers deserve better.”
That’s not really true. Companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just to get to the stage of defeating a class certification. Class action lawsuit do serve a purpose, but this one seems frivolous to me. I mean, what’s the damage?