‘Largest number of claims ever filed’: 17M people validated to receive Facebook settlement payment::The administrator in charge of vetting claims has received more than 28 million applications for a payment, said Lesley Weaver, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the case.
I really don’t like how class actions work. The payouts are almost always a pittance. If the judicial system really wanted to use them as a deterrent for shitty companies doing shitty things to large groups of people, class action damages should be structured such that every claimant gets $N… and the upper limit of valid claimants is not limited, though those claimants would still be subject to validation and verification. This would have the express intent of exposing a company to immediately catastrophic and unrecoverable financial damage.
Edit: and in terms of payout priority, the claimants should automatically go to the head of the line - before investors, shareholders, executives, employees, contractual obligations, etc. The process should be intentionally disruptive, painful, and harmful. The deterrent intent of the policy would be not only to provide catastrophic consequences for people and corporations who engage in broadly harmful and predatory activities, but also to strongly discourage anyone from doing business with entities like that.
There are a lot of problems with capitalism, but for all its flaws, I do still think that it can provide some good influences under the appropriate circumstances and constraints. This should be one of the constraints. Capitalism should not reward those who maliciously exploit populations in a systematic, malicious, amoral, and unsustainable fashion.
It’s not a deterrent, it’s a business expense. I bet it’s even tax deductible.
I added some clarification.
What I mean is that the process should be intentionally and purposefully catastrophic for the company in question, while providing victims the maximum possible recourse, in a financial sense.
And further, to incentivize the government to actually regulate and police shitty corporations so that they don’t get into that insane and catastrophic situation, the US government would become the guarantor for claimant payouts once the corporation becomes insolvent. I realize I’m handwaving a good bit, but I think a system something like that could act as an effective forcing function to steer corporate governance in a more ethical and sustainable direction - not just in the US, but worldwide.
I’m with ya but I think a distinction should be made for non-exempt, hourly employees, just to fuck with their exploitation equation in how to properly fuck someone to economic death.
Good point, and yes, I agree.
But think of all the poor investors? Should they be punished for simply investing in an obviously evil company?
Uh… yes. Yes they should.
And by “poor” I assume you mean “unfortunate” (and sarcastically at that), not “impoverished”
I don’t know how the process worked exactly, but Nvidia had to payout $30 per card for the false advertising on the GTX 970. (In my head, I totally remember getting $100 per card for each mine and my wife’s, but the internet says it was $30. 🤷)