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1. johndh+(OP)[view] [source] 2023-06-27 19:29:05
Helpful perspective. As a lawyer who has worked on both sides of class actions, I generally classify these cases in four categories:

-Legit cases that describe (or at least ultimately lead to finding) clear and meaningful wrongdoing. There's always some room for arguing one way or the other but ultimately there's some clarity that something meaningfully wrong happened. I think these are probably ~3-5 percent of cases filed. These cases tend to settle relatively early for high dollar figures.

-Cases of clear but unimportant wrongdoing. Technically a statute was violated, but no one was really hurt at all. These tend to settle for small $ figures. Perhaps 20% of cases.

-Important but unclear wrongdoing (evidence supports either finding; among one million documents, some look really bad, while others look very exculpatory). These stick around for a long time and ultimately earn lawyers a lot but cost the parties, on average, a lot of money to litigate. Perhaps 30% of cases.

-Complete/fabricated nonsense and/or fishing expeditions. Cost defendants a fair amount (and brutal for small defendants), but not the end of the world for big defendants. Perhaps 50% of cases.

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