Thanks to a tipster (send in your tips here), I found out the Middle District Court of Florida court has ruled in the settlement offer proposed in Miranda Day v. Persels & Associates, 3C, CareOne Credit Counseling, Freedom Point, Ascend One, Ruther & Associates, Jimmy Persels, Robyn Freedman, Bernaldo Dancel.
The settlement offer had been heralded as a disservice to consumers by Public Citizen in their filing against it. They said:
The proposed settlement provides benefits to defendants (a broad release from any liability to the 125,000 class members who paid substantial sums for debt settlement services), class counsel (attorney fees of up to $300,000), the representative plaintiff (an incentive payment of $5,000), and a research institute with no connections to the interests of the class or the objectives of this case (a cy press distribution of $100,000). But it provides absolutely no benefit to the class. A settlement that forces class members to surrender all of their claims in exchange for no consideration is not “fair, reasonable and adequate” as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e)(2). The Court should deny final approval. – Source
Instead, what the court stated was “the proposed settlement is not the product of fraud or collusion, and that it is fair, reasonable, and adequate resolution under the circumstances of this case.” – Source
Again, according to court documents, the final settlement is stated as being pushed forward by Class representative Miranda Day and some other defendants. “These parties argue that the settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate…”
Others besides Public Citizen opposed the settlement including the Attorney General’s of Connecticut, Florida, Maine, West Virginia, New York, and Oregon.
Attorney James Felman for the Class of consumers is reported to have noted that although the settlement is not ideal because it fails to get money back into the hands of the Class members, it does hold the defendants accountable for their actions by providing some relief.
Despite the objections that the Class members would not receive any money, none of the objectors have proposed a better solution. Felman also explained that the overwhelming majority (98.4%) of the Class members, including the objectors, were provided sufficient notice regarding the proposed settlement and given an opportunity to opt out of the Class. However, only 325 of over 125,000 Class members submitted exclusion requests.
Felman went on to state that even if they did win money for the Class there was uncertainty in collecting any judgment since his investigation revealed the defendants are facing “financial hardship.”
In the end, only one consumer, Miranda Day received $5,000. All other consumers received nothing. The court noted that distributing the $100,000 charitable distribution to the 125,000 Class members made it impractical and not feasible.
But thank goodness we got the elephant out of the room.
You are not alone. I'm here to help. There is no need to suffer in silence. We can get through this. Tomorrow can be better than today. Don't give up.
Do you have a question you'd like to ask me for free? Go ahead and click here.
- Lexington Law Credit Repair Gets Hammered in Lawsuit Settlement. If You Sell Credit Repair – Wake Up! - August 28, 2023
- People That Got Scammed by Robocall Debt Relief Company Life Management Services of Orange County to Get Money Back - July 7, 2023
- Consumers Charged Illegal Student Loan Relief Fees to Get Some Scratch Back - July 7, 2023
$300k in attorney fees and $5k to one consumer?
Once again, legalized extortion…our legal system is broken….so sad!
I also like the following reasoning: nobody could come up with a better settlement, so I am going to approve this one. Did they teach you that in judge school? Wait an idea is coming to me, how about just approving the settlement for Florida and letting the other states fend for themselves? It’s not like they were getting anything anyway. Nice.
This is so ridiculous, the fact that the consumers were not even able to get a percentage of fees paid back, much less any compensatory damages, is an outrage. I cannot believe the attorney used the fact that people did not opt out as evidence that it was OK to get a bad settlement. So the fact that the majority of consumers trusted his ability to do a good job made it OK to sell them out? Nice.