Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Owning stocks, I'm informed by my broker that I can participate in a class action lawsuit for whatever reason (price manipulation, analyst lala, ...) a few times every year. Lots of papers arrive by mail, fill out huge form, sign it, mail it in...

So far I've just kinda filed them (in the shredder) without doing anything. Is it worth bothering with in general? Am I leaving beer money on the table?

(I got a $20 check from deBeers due to some diamond market manipulation thingy or whatever out of the engagement ring I bought in 2006.---That money happened in 2013 and was filled in 2009!).

You gotta read the terms. The ones that I've seen amount to pennies per share.

Yeah, they are all different I'm afraid.

You can never tell. I got two checks this year for items I filed in 2011. One for about $15, the other for $151, which was a nice surprise. I filed one a few months ago, I figure will only amount to a few dollars at most, but for a postage stamp why not give it a try.

Yeah they are usually quite low. If you want to do the paperwork and get a few bucks in the mail after you have forgotten that you even did it then go for it. Beer money, sure.

I occasionally get these. The most recent was against GE over some time period in 2008-2009. I looked back at my trades during that time period, and I made several trades in and out of GE over the time period covered in the lawsuit. However, I made a profit on every single one of my GE trades during that time. I wonder if I would still be eligible for that lawsuit I didn't bother filling out the paperwork.

Did anyone else get their Barnes & Noble class action credit today? I was surprised to get $58. That's real money.

jennypenny wrote:Did anyone else get their Barnes & Noble class action credit today? I was surprised to get $58. That's real money.

from
https://ebooksagsettlements.com/Frequen ... tions.aspx
you are eligible if you bought an ebook ...

Your purchase was made from April 1, 2010 through May 21, 2012,

Damn, I bought my first ebook (ever) just this past month. Oh well, maybe I will be eligible for the next class action lawsuit related to ebook price gouging..

I don't usually fill out the paperwork for class action suits unless I really think the company deserves to pay, as class action suits are really just for the lawyers.

I got my $.17 from Amazon.

anomie wrote:

jennypenny wrote:Did anyone else get their Barnes & Noble class action credit today? I was surprised to get $58. That's real money.

from
https://ebooksagsettlements.com/Frequen ... tions.aspx
you are eligible if you bought an ebook ...

Your purchase was made from April 1, 2010 through May 21, 2012,

Damn, I bought my first ebook (ever) just this past month. Oh well, maybe I will be eligible for the next class action lawsuit related to ebook price gouging..

Is this one already over and done? Because I know plenty of people in the USA who have bought ebooks and probably don't know about this. (Link doesn't work for me.)

I just got an Amazon ebook credit yesterday. But I am not sure if it was the same lawsuit.

Sorry to gravedig, but I just got a notification of one of these and thought of this thread. I was ready to read through all the terms, but the documents I received seem very short on the details and looking it up hasn't produced many meaningful results. Can anyone point me in the right direction for deciding if this one is worth it?

Anyone know if you can be up for costs participating in those things if they lose ?

@Ian: a lot of times you won't know if it's really worth it until after the fact; payouts tend to be distributed pro rata. For example, I'm hoping I get the full $50 of tuna out of the tuna class action, but the amount could be drastically reduced if a lot of people submit a claim (hey, free tuna).

But sometimes the response rate is lower than expected. For example, TransUnion had a settlement worth something like $60M after attorney's fees. The class consisted of anyone who had a credit card, mortgage, or other loan between 1987 - 2008. After doing some division, I found that only about 2.2 million people filed a claim. That's a lot of people, but still a couple hundred million fewer than what was possible.

I've gotten hundreds of dollars in class action lawsuits in the past year. Of course I think it's worth it. But I did not receive any for owning stocks. So perhaps the ones related to stock will be smaller based on the % of individuals owning the stock.

I am going about this a different way. Personally, I am a lead Plaintiff in a class action suit, so I stand to gain quite a bit more. Probably 10-20k+ when you include the incentive payment. I have about 5-6 I am going to run with. Most of these are relating to telemarketers and the TCPA.

I think you can do quite well suing telemarketers that violate the TCPA.

jennypenny wrote:Did anyone else get their Barnes & Noble class action credit today? I was surprised to get $58. That's real money.

Most people would spend such a windfall foolishly. If you invest it, it will buy you many packs of gum, 30 years from now. Think of all the gum you could have then, vs a little bit of gum now.

I got one for Groupon recently, which I had incidentally made 6K off in 2 minutes of swing trading. I did not fall into the eligible category due to when I bought and sold, but they still sent me one anyway. The people who qualify get a few pennies, and the lawyers walk away with millions.

Did wrote:Anyone know if you can be up for costs participating in those things if they lose ?

I was under the impression you weren't, but would anyone like to correct me?

Chris wrote:@Ian: a lot of times you won't know if it's really worth it until after the fact; payouts tend to be distributed pro rata. For example, I'm hoping I get the full $50 of tuna out of the tuna class action, but the amount could be drastically reduced if a lot of people submit a claim (hey, free tuna).

But sometimes the response rate is lower than expected. For example, TransUnion had a settlement worth something like $60M after attorney's fees. The class consisted of anyone who had a credit card, mortgage, or other loan between 1987 - 2008. After doing some division, I found that only about 2.2 million people filed a claim. That's a lot of people, but still a couple hundred million fewer than what was possible.

I figured it would be pro rata. The stock in question is HCP, and there have to be a lot of people purchasing that...