Justice
Yesterday, a couple of similar settlements were reached concerning cases where undue police violence against innocent mentally ill citizens led to death. Read on to find out the details.
Justice
We often hear about bigtime class action settlements, the ones with millions of dollars set up in trusts and application processes to benefit from. Like the $325 million Apple antenna lawsuit, or the recent $3 million Nutella settlement. In these types of settlements, the number of people affected by them (the “class”) is unknown, so the settlement money is put into a fund and a time period is given in which class members can sign up to receive some of the money from that fund. The total settlement award that we read about in the papers, however, is actually an upper bound. That’s the limit — once it’s reached, it’s hard cheese for any more people who want to benefit. Very rarely is the full amount given out. More often, the upper bound is not reached and some money is left sitting in the trust. What happens to this money?
Read more to see the answer to that clearly rhetorical question
Coming soon to a Fox affiliate near you
In a move sure to disappoint millions, DirecTV was forced to stop the broadcast of Tribune Media’s signal, which includes some local Fox affiliates. The two companies are in the middle of settlement negotiations regarding a contract dispute and, due to federal law, the broadcasting company was forced to drop the signal until a contract was in place. DirecTV has said that it had hoped Tribune Media would allow the broadcast to continue during the negotiations, but Tribune refused, which DirecTV has described as “the true definition of `bad faith’ in every sense of the term”. Wow. Bitter much?
The contract affects nineteen markets, including New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia. In those markets, depending on which local affiliates Tribune owns, viewers will miss out on such shows as American Idol, The Vampire Diaries, and the broadcast of america’s pastime, Major League Baseball. Oh, the humanity!
I see this as two huge companies arguing over millions of dollars that can’t remember what they’re arguing about, sort of like a Bleak House situation. At some point, in their relentless pursuit of money, one of them will forget that their whole purpose is to provide access to television programming for their loyal paying customers. Hopefully the two companies will work it out soon. If I miss Gossip Girl because of this, someone’s going to pay.
the future?
It’s always interesting to see what an entity does with its settlement money, whether required to or not. The recent $25 billion federal mortgage settlement, although recommended to be used for debt relief and foreclosure fraud investigation, has been earmarked by states for a variety of purposes. Most notably, the state of Georgia is using their slice of the pie to boost local infrastructure projects, arguing that the settlement includes no legally binding provisions for the money’s use and paving the way for other states to do the same. Companies also pop up in the news sometimes for funneling settlement money into investment funds or, more commonly and in the interest of good press, towards charity, as is the case when Gordon Ramsay donated $66,000 USD after skipping out on a charity function. Continue reading
Spin me round
The entertainment world has recently reached a few settlements, and brought some old ones back up for new litigation.
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