They're purchasing lottery tickets that are mostly paid for by tax payers who fund the court systems.

There should be publicly available data about how expensive class action lawsuits are to the court.

I would personally categorize it as as subsidized not paid for since the lawyers get nothing if they fail which is a meaningful cost.

None of this is to say I support the current system. Class action lawsuits are now designed to get settlements that save the company targeted millions or more compared to the actual damage agreed to.

And giving the lawyers millions when each litigant is lucky to get $20 is not reasonable.

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BigTTYGothGF an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The only direct costs to the taxpayers in these kinds of lawsuits are the judge's time (also the bailiff's, stenographer's, and a couple more), a slight extra load on the computer system to handle the filings, and miscellaneous wear and tear on the courtroom.

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jt2190 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

- “Purchasing”: The attorneys that are taking these cases for $0 in the hopes that they’ll get n% of $SETTLEMENT

- “paid for by tax payers who fund the court systems”. The alternative would mean taking away the right of private citizens to sue.

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strictnein an hour ago | parent [-]

I mean, I think you understand what I'm saying. They're externalizing the costs and internalizing the benefits. The same thing we complain about with numerous other industries.

The alternative would not be to take away the right of private citizens to sue. There is, surprisingly enough, quite a chasm between identifying that some parties are taking advantage of a system and completely shutting that system down.

	▲	jt2190 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It sounds like you’re proposing that individuals should have to pay court costs, in full so that the “taxpayer” doesn’t have to pay the bill

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m463 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

aren't the court systems pretty self-funding?