There's nothing "alleged" about it. They were convicted & found guilty of such.
And yet the Government has no problem (as they once did) with electronics, photo and other manufacturers forcing retailers to sell at "minimum selling prices" (as opposed to "minimum advertised prices"). Seems quite inconsistent to me. Isn't a manufacturer and a retailer who agree to sell at a certain price engaging in price fixing?
Years ago, I was involved in a deal for another company to sell an OEM version of a product I produced. The one thing we were told by the lawyers we were not permitted to discuss was the price the other company was going to sell the product for. It had to be completely up to them.
Just received $ 13.21 credit from Amazon for Apple eBooks. Have bought eBooks from Apple but the majority of eBooks i buy are from Amazon due to a larger selection of obscure titles.
Too bad this doesn't apply to those of us in Canada.
I bought several ebooks, and in no way feel slighted or overcharged by Apple. If they sent me any money I'd just turn around and use the credit to buy something else from Apple, effectively sending a chunk of that money straight back to Apple.
The best way for an "eligible participant" to respond to this fraud of a judgment is to ignore the case and not sign up to receive the credit. You'd be stealing with one hand and returning the money, minus attorney fees, with the other.
i never respond to class-action lawsuits and the dirtbags who file them. They are lawsuits designed entirely for the enrichment of ambulance chasers.
Some class-action lawsuits are mostly for the benefit of ambulance chasers and some aren't. The merits of this particular case aside (I don't know enough about it to form an opinion), in a world with enormous corporate businesses, a class-action is sometimes the only way to seek justice and get the corporation's attention by making the risks of wrongdoing commensurate with the potential rewards. If a billion dollar company defrauds a few million customers for a total of, say, a hundred dollars each, that comes out to a few hundred million dollars of ill-gotten profit for the company. Even if an individual could sue and hope to get treble damages, that $300. It's not worth it for the individual to sue, and the corporation will gladly spend $100,000 to fight off any given case where an individual sues just for the principle of the thing. They've still cleared a few hundred million dollars by stealing. A class-action, on the other hand, has the potential of more than wiping out gains from wholesale theft. That's at least enough to make a corporation think twice before defrauding customers, while increasing the possibility that those who have been defrauded could be made whole again.
Are some class-action suits an abuse of the system? Sure. That doesn't mean that the concept is itself a bad idea. We have to have giant corporations in order to amass the industrial-scale means of production for many things we need and want. That said, we also need mechanisms that can check and balance the power of those giant corporations and protect the interests of the proverbial little guy.
The best way for an "eligible participant" to respond to this fraud of a judgment is to ignore the case and not sign up to receive the credit. You'd be stealing with one hand and returning the money, minus attorney fees, with the other.
i never respond to class-action lawsuits and the dirtbags who file them. They are lawsuits designed entirely for the enrichment of ambulance chasers.
Some class-action lawsuits are mostly for the benefit of ambulance chasers and some aren't. The merits of this particular case aside (I don't know enough about it to form an opinion), in a world with enormous corporate businesses, a class-action is sometimes the only way to seek justice and get the corporation's attention by making the risks of wrongdoing commensurate with the potential rewards. If a billion dollar company defrauds a few million customers for a total of, say, a hundred dollars each, that comes out to a few hundred million dollars of ill-gotten profit for the company. Even if an individual could sue and hope to get treble damages, that $300. It's not worth it for the individual to sue, and the corporation will gladly spend $100,000 to fight off any given case where an individual sues just for the principle of the thing. They've still cleared a few hundred million dollars by stealing. A class-action, on the other hand, has the potential of more than wiping out gains from wholesale theft. That's at least enough to make a corporation think twice before defrauding customers, while increasing the possibility that those who have been defrauded could be made whole again.
Are some class-action suits an abuse of the system? Sure. That doesn't mean that the concept is itself a bad idea. We have to have giant corporations in order to amass the industrial-scale means of production for many things we need and want. That said, we also need mechanisms that can check and balance the power of those giant corporations and protect the interests of the proverbial little guy.
The best way of keeping "giant corporations" in check? Competition and less restrictive rule making. The result of this case was less choice for customers and it had all the earmarks of being a favor from someone in the government to Amazon. The actions of Judge Denise Cote were particularly appalling.
Comments
Years ago, I was involved in a deal for another company to sell an OEM version of a product I produced. The one thing we were told by the lawyers we were not permitted to discuss was the price the other company was going to sell the product for. It had to be completely up to them.
Are some class-action suits an abuse of the system? Sure. That doesn't mean that the concept is itself a bad idea. We have to have giant corporations in order to amass the industrial-scale means of production for many things we need and want. That said, we also need mechanisms that can check and balance the power of those giant corporations and protect the interests of the proverbial little guy.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000023883