I took a major corporation to court last year and it didn’t cost me a cent. I also didn’t know about the class action suit until it was being settled and out of court.
At that point the company was required to send my husband and me a letter telling us we would receive a settlement in a few months – unless we filed our own suit.
The big issue? Someone disagreed with the company’s system of accounting. We decided we had better check into this.
I pulled out our contract and financial record. I studied it closely. I tried to see what all the fuss was about. If I winked my eyes just right and calculated my math very closely I could see something, maybe.
The same something I had noticed years before but I had shrugged it off as simply a difference of methods of accounting. At the time, and again last spring, I did not consider it worth even a letter, let alone the time, fuss and bother of lawyers, accountant and meetings with judges.
But someone had.
I tossed the paper in the desk and figured I must not understand the intricate workings of high finance and business. We would not be filing our own suit.
I forgot about the letter until going back to school costs began squeezing the family pocket book. I pulled out the pages of fine print with all its clauses, the financial records of our dealings with the company and tried to figure out how much we would be receiving.
Even though I have a degree in math, I could not figure it out. So I tossed the papers back in the desk with a shrug.
I don’t have a degree in business management, but my common sense said “no one files a class action suit unless it’s worth the bother.” With that assumption, I began making plans for the unspecified amount coming sometime.
When the check finally came it was too late to help with the going back to school costs.
But, I thought as I sliced open the envelope and pulled out the check, it’s just in time for the holidays. Then I read the amount.
By court order, minus attorney fees, our share of the settlement, came to the grand total of 53 cents.
It cost at least that much for the postage and handling and printing of one letter, let alone the one I received in the spring.
The fine print said each customer had been awarded either 35 cents, 70 cents or $1.05 before subtracting 50 percent of the settlement for attorney’s fees. The company itself had agreed to pay legal fees of $1.25 for each current customer and 20 cents for former customers of the business’s services.
Final checks for customers were 18 cents, 35 cents and 53 cents.
Let’s see for seven years we did business with the company. Before paying attorney fees that divides out to about 18 cents per year.
After attorney fees, our big settlement as participants in a class action suit came to less than 8 cents a year.
The problem was not worth the fuss and bother. The settlement hadn’t been worth the daydreaming. I still have the check. Maybe I’ll frame it to remind me not to count my chicken before they hatch nor to get into a fight over a handful of chicken feed.