Ctr for Class Action Fairness

Theodore H. "Ted" Frank (born December 14, 1968), is an American lawyer, activist, legal writer, and blogger, based in Washington, D.C..^[1] He is noted for writing the vetting report of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the John McCain campaign in the 2008 presidential election.^[2][3] He is the founder and president of the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF), established in 2009.^[4][5] The New York Times calls him the "leading critic of abusive class-action settlements";^[6] the Wall Street Journal has referred to him as "a leading tort-reform advocate."^[7]

Frank graduated from Brandeis University in 1991, and the University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with a Juris Doctor. A litigator from 1995 to 2005, and a former clerk for Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Frank was a director and fellow of the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.^[8][9][10] Since 2011, he has been an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, where he is also editor of the Institute's web magazine, PointofLaw.com. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group and contributes regularly to conservative legal weblogs, and, as of 2008, is a member of the American Law Institute.^[11]

Background and early career

Frank was born in 1968. He is a grandson of journalist Nelson Frank, a nephew of author Johanna Hurwitz, and a cousin of the politics editor of The Atlantic Online, Garance Franke-Ruta.^[12]

He graduated from the Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, then earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Brandeis University in May 1991.^[13] He wrote columns for his campus newspaper and political magazines and was a member of the student senate. He objected to a campaign to stop serving pork at the Jewish university, which was noted in The New York Times.^[14]

In 1994 Frank earned his Juris Doctor with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School.^[15] At Chicago he earned Order of the Coif and served on the law review.^[16] While at Chicago Law, he was a known presence on Usenet groups and researched urban legends; he was an early contributor to the Baseball Prospectus collective through essays on the Usenet group rec.sport.baseball.^[17][18] He has also been described as one of the most notorious contributors along with snopes to an activity then known as "trolling for newbies" (the term "trolling" was not negative in connotation).^[19][20]

After clerking for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Frank entered private practice between 1995 and 2005 as a litigator on class action tort cases at law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Irell & Manella, and O’Melveny & Myers.^[21] Among his earliest cases were two sudden acceleration cases, where he represented the automakers.^[22] As part of his practice, Frank defended a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to delay the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, defended Vioxx liability cases, and served on defense teams for antitrust and patent cases.^[citation ^needed]

Advocacy of tort reform

The whole point of a class action is to generate efficiencies that wouldn't be possible in individual actions—so why are the attorneys taking a one-third contingent fee instead of a much smaller percentage?

—Frank, questioning the class action system. May 2005.^[23]

In 2003, Frank began contributing regularly to Overlawyered, a legal weblog edited by Walter Olson that advocates tort reform; he continued there through 2010.^[24]

Frank joined the American Enterprise Institute in 2005 when AEI offered him a fellowship to research the effects of the Class Action Fairness Act.^[22] As the director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest he spoke and wrote about civil justice issues and liability.^{[21][25][26][27][28]} Frank also sits on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group.^[29]

Frank is a leading proponent for tort reform in the United States.^[7] According to Frank, he became disillusioned at class action tactics, and the willingness of judges to approve settlements he felt were poor for consumers.^[22] He has strongly criticized obesity lawsuits, calling them "rent-seeking vehicles that are neither good law nor good public policy."^[30]

In April 2008, several members of Congress brought up the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act under Title VII, a revision of law "to state that prior acts outside the 180 day statute of limitations could be included", affecting employment financial issues.^[31] Frank was against the revision, saying that wages and hiring would be reduced to counter the possibility of litigation from a hired employee.^[31] The law was eventually passed in January 2009.^[31]

In February 2011, Frank was part of a three-member panel at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee which consisted of himself, James Blumstein, who is a law professor at the university, and Charlie Ross, a former State Senator in Mississippi, presenting their perspectives on how the business and people of the state would benefit from tort reform.^[32] Frank and the other panelists argued that "Tennessee’s current civil justice system is both inconsistent and unsustainable" and it was argued that, based on reforms in other states, a reform in this area could result in 30,000 jobs a year or 577 jobs each week in Tennessee and significantly improve the health system.^[33]

Issues and conflicts

In 2006, Frank published an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing for various tort reforms and criticizing the Association of Trial Lawyers of America for "show[ing] much more of an interest in benefiting trial lawyers than in fairness or justice.^[34] Jon Haber, CEO of ATLA, responded in the Post, accusing Frank of proposing to destroy "the nation's civil justice system to benefit the insurance industry, drug companies and other corporate powers", of a "laughable" claim that too many lawsuits "may transform the nation into a 'banana republic'", of "find[ing] the fight for justice trivial" and making "nothing more than an attack on the Constitution of the United States".^[35] The next day, Frank described Haber's op-ed as "a collection of ad hominems and insults and non sequiturs", "purport[ing] to be responding to [Frank, but] in fact responding to a fictional straw-man". He accused Haber of "dishonest change of subject: at no point does Haber defend the lawsuits I actually criticize", and ended by noting that Haber did not respond to "the most important part of my op-ed" about "trial lawyers ... trying to undo [the concept that a deal is a deal] retroactively".^[36]

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2007, Frank said that the Department of Treasury and SEC should urge the Supreme Court to reject expanded securities litigation liability in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta.^[37] Congressmen John Conyers, Jr. and Barney Frank criticized this op-ed in their saying that Frank's argument substituted policy considerations for the plain text of statute.^[38][39] Frank rebutted the allegation on the Overlawyered weblog.^[40] Also in 2007, Frank posted an article regarding tort trial lawyer Arthur Alan Wolk on Overlawyered, a website he has regularly posted on since 2003 about tort reform issues, that prompted Wolk to sue Frank for defamation. The case was dismissed as barred by the one year statute of limitations.^[41] On appeal, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press,^[42] the Society of Professional Journalists,^[43] the American Society of News Editors,^[44] the New York Times,^[45] the Washington Post,^[45] the Associated Press,^[45] and law professors and First Amendment experts Eugene Volokh^[46] and Glenn Reynolds, among others, filed amicus briefs in support of the defendants saying that there was no actionable claim of libel.

Frank, who worked on the Vioxx case early in his career, was called "perhaps the loudest critic of the Vioxx litigation," and debated trial lawyer Mark Lanier about the issue.^[47] Frank continued his criticism in a 2011 article. "A final sordid chapter in the tort litigation over Vioxx closed, as Judge Eldon Fallon divvied up $315 million to be paid to the plaintiffs' attorneys who worked on the litigation. This sum was in addition to the more than $1.2 billion already paid to such attorneys. When you add in what Merck paid to plaintiffs and for its own attorneys, the Vioxx litigation cost it more than $7 billion. Yet Merck almost certainly did not do anything wrong. Even as an unsympathetic corporate defendant, it won the vast majority of cases that went to trial, and another dozen or more that plaintiffs' attorneys dismissed on the eve of trial rather than risk the publicity of a certain loss. Even in the handful of cases that Merck lost at trial, such as the $253 million verdict in the Ernst case that generated much of the publicity that led to tens of thousands of cases being filed, Merck won reversals of most of those on appeal because the verdicts were based on conclusory junk-science expert testimony that should not have been admitted into evidence."^[25] Lanier defended the settlement as fair.^[47]

Sarah Palin vetting

According to the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, on the weekend before John McCain made his vice-presidential pick, McCain's advisor Arthur Culvahouse asked Ted Frank to prepare a written report on Sarah Palin, "Thrown together from scratch in less than forty hours, the document highlighted her vulnerabilities: "Democrats upset at McCain's anti-Obama 'celebrity' advertisements will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News expressed concern that she often seemed 'unprepared or over her head' in a campaign run by a friend." " The book also says that Frank worked on the vetting of Senator Joe Lieberman.^[2] The report was widely criticized;^[48][49][50] GQ has cited the report as "the most infamous document in veep-vetting history."^[3] In Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House (2011), they describe the vetting at length.^[51] Frank has defended the report as "exhaustive" and covering "almost everything that would eventually dog her on the campaign trail."^[3] In the HBO film Game Change, Frank was played by Brian d'Arcy James.^[3]

Center for Class Action Fairness

Main article: Center for Class Action Fairness

Operating largely on donations, the CCAF in a short period has gained a reputation as a formidable check on highly questionable practices that have gone unchallenged precisely because they are the product of collusive parties and allied judges. The advent of a committed and aggressive watchdog like CCAF is, to those familiar with these scams, like sunlight and Lysol.

— Karen Lee Torre of the Connecticut Law Tribune describing the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF).^[10]

In 2009, Frank founded the non-profit Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements.^[4][5] According to The American Lawyer, as of March 2013, the CCAF had successfully challenged two dozen settlements.^[52]

Frank founded CCAF after his successful objection to the proposed class action settlement in the Grand Theft Auto consumer fraud case. Under the settlement, class members who had bought a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game with a hidden, sexually explicit easter egg would have received less than $30,000, while the plaintiffs' attorneys would receive $1 million in legal fees.^{[4][53][54][55][56][57]} The court rejected the settlement on other grounds, but the case spurred Frank to devote himself to objecting to class action settlements, and he left AEI.^[58][59]

The Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) is a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law firm, founded by Ted Frank in June 2009 to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements.^[1][2] It is a 501(c)(3) organization.

According to The American Lawyer, as of March 2011, the CCAF had filed objections to 17 settlements, with eight objections pending in federal district courts, and had been successful on six of them. The CCAF has objected to settlements throughout the United States, particularly in cases where class action lawyers receive cash payments but the plaintiff class receives only discount coupons for further products and services from the defendant company. It has distanced itself from other firms that make money by holding up class action settlements until they themselves are paid off. The CCAF has raised objections to class action settlements involving the Grand Theft Auto "Hot Coffee" minigame, Honda Civic Hybrids, Apple backdating, A.G. Edwards, Bluetooth headsets, and the Cobell Indian Trust.

Background

Ted Frank was inspired to establish the Center from his success in objecting to the class action settlement in the Grand Theft Auto consumer fraud case where class members would have received under $30,000 while the attorneys were asking for $1 million.^[1][3][4][5]

"Operating largely on donations, the CCAF in a short period has gained a reputation as a formidable check on highly questionable practices that have gone unchallenged precisely because they are the product of collusive parties and allied judges. The advent of a committed and aggressive watchdog like CCAF is, to those familiar with these scams, like sunlight and Lysol."

— Karen Lee Torre of the Connecticut Law Tribune describing the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF).^[6]

In June 2009, Frank founded the public-interest non-profit law firm Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements.^[1][2] The firm is described by Frank as "a "guerrilla" operation with a shoestring budget".^[7] CCAF was initially a project of Donors Trust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund, which paid him as an independent contractor to manage the project, relying on donors from charitable foundations and independent individuals to fund it.^[8][9] To date, the CCAF has accepted only about 40 percent of the requests it has received to object to a settlement and Frank has said that if it is a good settlement or close enough to the line, he wouldn't "risk creating bad precedent."^[8] As of 2010, the CCAF has three staff attorneys, including Frank.^[10]

Center for Class Action Fairness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Center_for_Class**_**Action**_**Fairness**

Wikipedia

The Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) is a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law ... would be impractical to distribute class action settlement funds directly to the entire class of plaintiffs, the practice has been criticized from time to ...

Background · ‎Cause · ‎Notable cases · ‎References

Ted Frank And The Real Risk Of Class Actions | Litigation & Trial ...

www.litigationandtrial.com/2015/06/articles/attorney/contingent-fee/ted-frank/

Jun 23, 2015 - ... to class action settlements through the Center for Class Action Fairness. ... He explains how, because CCAF was “poorly funded and thinly ...

Exposing class action objectors: Lieff Cabraser, Ted Frank in 'lurid ...

blogs.reuters.com/.../exposing-class-action-objectors-lieff-cabraser-ted-frank-in-lurid-...

Jun 22, 2015 - Exposing class action objectors: Lieff Cabraser, Ted Frank in 'lurid' dispute ... Ted Frank of the nonprofit Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) .... and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and ...

Center for Class Action Fairness LLC | Above the Law

abovethelaw.com/tag/center-for-class-action-fairness-llc/

Above the Law

Sounds like a great gig if you hate plaintiffs' firms. [Center for Class Action Fairness]. * Should Jewish judges recuse themselves in Palestinian terrorism cases?

Center for Class Action Fairness: - The Volokh Conspiracy

volokh.com/2009/12/23/center-for-class-action-fairness/

The Volokh Conspiracy

Dec 23, 2009 - Center for Class Action Fairness: By Todd ... Is there some provision that I, as counsel for an objector, get paid out of the total settlement fund?

A Litigator Fights Class-Action Suits - WSJ

www.wsj.com/.../SB10001424052970203554104577002190...

The Wall Street Journal

Oct 31, 2011 - Lawyer Ted Frank leads the Center for Class Action Fairness. .... He won't divulge his funding sources, saying only that the money comes from ...

...

ed Frank of the nonprofit Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) requires his clients to pledge in their retainer agreements that they’re not looking for financial payoffs in bringing objections to proposed class settlements. As Frank explained earlier this month in an extraordinary declaration at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the purpose of the provision is to distinguish Frank and his nonprofit from “professional objectors” – lawyers and clients who file objections to big class action settlements in the hope that class counsel will pay them to go away. Since founding the Center for Class Action Fairness in 2009, Frank has said his motive is to correct class action abuses for his clients and other class members, not to help clients win extortionate payoffs.

But filings this month at the 7th Circuit, in the appeal of a fee award in a $75.5 million settlement of allegations that Capital One violated the Telephone Consumers Protection Act in debt collection robocalls, reveal a closer business relationship than was previously known between Frank andChristopher Bandas of the Bandas Law Firm, a plaintiffs’ lawyer and frequent class action objector. Beginning in 2013, Frank has received regular fees from Bandas – a total of about $250,000, according to Frank’s declaration. At first, Frank contracted for a piece of Bandas’ share of proceeds from resolved cases in which Frank was a consultant. The two subsequently revised their agreement to provide Frank with a minimum monthly payment for his work on Bandas’ behalf.

Frank said he made the deal with Bandas, with the approval of his nonprofit’s board, because he believed it was in the Center’s interests, especially after Frank argued and won a 7th Circuit appeal in Eubank v. Pella, one of Bandas’ cases. “I took a pay cut from the Center and the Center used the savings to hire expert witnesses and attorneys to bring more ambitious objections,” Frank said in his declaration. “Mr. Bandas helped wrangle objectors in other CCAF cases to reduce cacophony in oral arguments, and, until this case, did not interfere with CCAF cases or clients. I understood that my pay from Mr. Bandas was made possible and would not have occurred without Mr. Bandas profitably settling cases where I was not counsel of record, but rationalized accepting that money because of the benefit to case law of victories like Eubank that might not have occurred if I was not assisting Mr. Bandas.”

Frank and Bandas have now parted ways, in a turn of events Frank called “lurid, complex and Grishamesque” in a June 10 filing at the 7th Circuit in the Capital One case. That description alone would justify this post – I’m a sucker for lurid – but there’s a more important reason to write about the Capital One appeal: It exposes secret dealmaking among plaintiffs’ lawyers that pretty much confirms the dark suspicions of class action detractors.

I should caution here that this story is still unwinding. On Friday, Bandas filed a petition for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Frank in state court in Texas. The Nueces County court docket indicates the TRO was granted but Bandas and his counsel didn’t respond to my requests to see the signed order. Frank said in an email that he plans to file a brief Monday night addressing the Bandas allegation. He declined additional comment except to say, “I’m quite confident that I’ve done nothing wrong.” Class counsel in the Capital One case,Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, filed a brief Thursday defending the $75.5 million settlement and its $16 million fee award, but will respond specifically to Frank’s allegations later this week. Lieff partner Jonathan Selbin declined to comment in advance of that filing.

With the caveat that we still haven’t yet heard from the other players, here’s what Frank claims. His client in the Capital One case, Jeffrey Collins, was one of a handful of objectors who appealed approval of the settlement to the 7th Circuit. Two objectors protested the entire settlement. Three, including Frank’s client, objected only to Lieff Cabraser’s fee award. The other fee objectors were represented by Frank’s business partner Bandas and another serial objectors’ lawyer, Darrell Palmer, who has retained Frank to write briefs and present oral arguments. Bandas and Palmer joined Frank’s 7th Circuit brief protesting Lieff Cabraser’s fee award on May 4.

But then, according to Frank’s June 10 motion to withdraw as Collins’ counsel, Bandas approached a Lieff Cabraser lawyer, claiming he could settle all of the objectors’ appeals. On June 4, according to Frank’s motion, Lieff Cabraser made a settlement offer to Bandas, with whom the firm had previously made a deal to settle objectors’ appeals in another big TCPA case in April.