Lawyer Is Big Winner In Webcamgate Settlement 475
crimeandpunishment writes "The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania has agreed to a $610,000 settlement in two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops. Less than a third of that will go to the students. A total of $185,000 will be put in trust for the students. Their lawyer will receive $425,000."
Associated costs (Score:4, Insightful)
But you know, lawyers have costs too. For example they need to pay their office, wages, taxes, and paper isn't free either. The students itself didn't have any costs and I doubt they would had win the case without a lawyer, don't you think?
Lawyers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawyers are legalized crooks, news at 11. The world would be a better place without them. The fact that we need specialized professions to be able to properly navigate the legal system is, well, downright stupid.
Who says our legal system is broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
QED (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Associated costs (Score:3, Insightful)
How's that a troll? Usually the agreement is for the lawyer to get a healthy cut on a spec case, since the only payment they get is if they win.
Re:Associated costs (Score:3, Insightful)
The student's school took photos using the webcam on their laptop.
Do you really need an answer to your question?
Re:Lawyers... (Score:1, Insightful)
Less than ideal (Score:5, Insightful)
-gate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
As always! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always the lawyers who win. Always the lawyers.
The RIAA fighting piracy? Lawyers make millions. Microsoft asserting its software patents? Lawyers make millions. Porn studios want to sue a bunch of people? They call Andrew Crossley. Layers make millions. Andrew Crossley leaks the database of his victims? Sue him. Lawyers make millions. Someone calls you a dick on the internet? Sue him. Lawyers make millions. A hospital patient dies? Sue the doctors! Lawyers make millions. etc etc etc
Where does all that money come from? Of course, we as good little consumers and taxpayers, pay for everything. It's not the shareholders that lose money -- companies have an obligation to keep them happy -- but they have no obligation towards their customers or any need to keep prices reasonable.
Re:Lawyers... (Score:3, Insightful)
You honestly think that the lawyer in this case deserves to get over double the payout that the students received? Oh wait never mind, your a troll. No sane person would think that.
The lawyers pay in this case is beyond ridiculous. For the amount of work they do they are almost as overpaid as sports "professionals" who earn millions of dollars to play a fucking game.
Re:Should have held-out for more money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:as usual... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of lawyers are scum that leach off of the rest of society. Remember, judges are also lawyers.
Exactly, we should go back to the simple days when people appointed by the king made arbitrary decisions based on their mood and how much people bribed them. That was much better.
Free Legal care! (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the call for the US governemt to take over Legal care?
Isn't legal care a right? Isn't $425,000 a big bill to be paid?
Where are the liberals and the Democrats in calling for Lawyers to be paid like Doctors?
How about a system of free legal care for everyone with lawyers paid according to a scale set by the governemnt? Spying on kids = $8,000 fee, not $425,000.
Unlike Obamacare, this really could save taxpayers money.
I just wish Congress did unto lawyers what they do unto doctors.....
Re:Associated costs (Score:5, Insightful)
...people expect lawyers (and everyone else) to work for free.
Not quite. Continue on for my explanation...
Although most people have only two choices: Allow for the "thick percentage" or have no representation at all.
That's why people are pissed. They know that your options are extremely limited, and they take advantage of that fact by charging pretty much whatever they want.
Wow, just... wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Associated costs (Score:4, Insightful)
I should also note that a six-figure education doesn't help lawyer costs, either...the price payed for a lawyer's education is just as ludicrous as the price they charge their clients.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Associated costs (Score:4, Insightful)
...people expect lawyers (and everyone else) to work for free.
Indeed how DARE the proles expect the legal system to function without ludicrous fees!
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:1, Insightful)
If the cost for garbage pickup were $1000 a month, I think I would reasonably conclude that garbage men were useless and shouldn't be paid.
$425 an hour if you figure 1000 hours worked (Score:2, Insightful)
at 40 hours a week 1000 billable hours comes out to 10 months of work, which is how long the case has been in the news. nothing greedy about it
not like the lawyer keeps everything. there are office expenses, salaries for paralegals, business taxes, personal taxes, benefits and a long list of other expenses that have to be paid before they can take some money home to pay their personal expenses.
on another forum i frequent there is a lawyer who lives in this school district and he drives a toyota. most lawyers see about the same percentage as music artists get on CD sales after they pay all the expenses
No, we all win. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't get this attitude that the lawyers are the only winners. Sure, they're the big financial winners here. This was never a case about lost funds, though. It was a case in which the students sought both relief from invasive practices and a punitive sum to discourage further similar actions. They won on both counts, and since no school district wants to shell out over half a mil because they spied on their students it should be a win for the privacy of teens everywhere.
Re:Lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they do. There are lots of small software shops that easily charge that amount for 8 months work; and just see what happens if you want 8 months work out of a 4 man development team at your local IBM shop.
More to the point, what would you expect a developer to charge if their payment was dependent on financial success of the product they created? I.e. The software shop gets nothing if the software doesn't make money.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is with the percentage, not the fact the guy was paid for his work.
Re:Lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, why, all those lawyers, WTF did they do for Rosa Parks, and black kids wanting the same education as the white kids and all those other minorities who wanted to have the same rights as the majority, like being able to vote?
And the lawyers here in Massachusetts, who convinced the Supreme Judicial Court that, yes, gay people do indeed have the right to marry, lazy bastards, all they did was point to a couple of amendments in the Constitution and the Commonwealth charter!
And DO NOT get me started on the Southern Poverty Law Center! Suing Klansmen and Nazis just because they like to beat up and murder people.
Yeah, get rid of all the lawyers.
Until YOU need one, of course.
Thank you for proving the truth of Ted Nelson's comment about fools and computers.
who cares about the money (Score:5, Insightful)
who got sacked for doing this? Who's going to jail? who's being charged with pedophilia? Who's on the sex crime watch list because of this?
Because if the answer is no one then justice was not served and no one learned any lessons 'Cept that Lawyers charge a lot for their services.
Re:Associated costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, a lot of people do expect professions like lawyers and doctors to do some work for free. That old saw about meeting a guy at a party who says he's a lawyer, and asking his advice is true. People often think that just asking a question should be free, never mind that it does take that extensive education and some questions are fairly complicated to answer. But no, "oh, you make a lot of money usually, and this is just a question, so I should get access to your knowledge for free."
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that the plaintiffs signed a contract with the attorney specifically pointing out the details of the contingent fee, right? That the rules of legal ethics require the attorney to make it clear to the client how a contingent fee works? If the plaintiffs wanted to take the entire award, they could've hired an attorney that they paid by the hour. They wanted to pay nothing up front, and the trade off is that they took a much-reduced award on the back end.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:5, Insightful)
This one produced a win for privacy rights and the rights of children.
But hey, you can't get your knee jerkin' with that kind of rhetoric.
Re:as usual... (Score:3, Insightful)
You've posted this point in response to at least one other comment. I want to commend you for it.
Like this case, class action lawsuits are pretty commonly taken on with no guarantee of compensation. If the plaintiffs lose, their legal team gets nothing. Complain about the moral sliminess of lawyers all you want, but like all of us they definitely will not work for free.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy there, Skippy. AC was saying that this probably wouldn't have ended well without a lawyer involved, in response to you saying lawyers are "legalized crooks" and that "the world would be a better place without them". Of course the amount the lawyer took is ridiculous, no one said otherwise.
You don't win a gold medal in ten seconds, you win it by training almost non-stop the rest of the time. And you don't charge what you think is fair, you charge what they think is fair. If someone offered you millions of dollars to write code would you say no? I've charged upwards of $150 an hour and companies were happy to pay that amount for a specialized skill set. I imagine the same thing happened here: the lawyer's take was worth it to the students.
Re:As always! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's true, when parties have disputes, the people they hire to represent them in those disputes get paid.
You might as well say "it's always the doctors who win." After all, everybody gets sick eventually, and there are the doctors, just waiting to get their cut, profiting off of the suffering of others.
Or "it's always the programmers who win." After all, computers are everywhere now, and somebody has to program them. And there are the programmers, eager to take their slice. They write a program once and sell a million copies. What parasites!
Or you could look at it as a valuable service rendered by specialists so that other people don't have to worry about the details of the legal system, modern health care, or computer programming. It's called the division of labor, and it's essential to a well-developed economy.
It's not the shareholders that lose money -- companies have an obligation to keep them happy
Shareholders lose money because of lawsuits all the time. A company loses a suit and its stock price tanks. A company has to pay out a ton of money and there's none left over to pay shareholders a dividend. A company loses a major suit, goes bankrupt, and the shareholders get nothing. Companies can try to pass on costs to customers, but it doesn't always work. If passing on the cost means raising prices above what the market will bear, customers will go elsewhere.
Re:Associated costs (Score:1, Insightful)
I wish I lived in a country where the "average" ( median? ) person earned $48 per hour. That would be a socialist utopia.
However, it is eminently reasonable to point out that it is very likely that there were two or even more attorneys working on this case, in addition to probably twice that many support staff, so your math is based on such guesswork as to be completely preposterous.
Some lawyers do very well for themselves, many do not. Most people with law degrees are not even able to make a living practicing law and end up doing other things.
Re:Associated costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the taxpayers rarely get any say in who they "hire" when the corporate jungle owns all the media outlets and can pretty much dictate who the voters even know are on the ballot.
Well, we're talking about a local school here... Not Washington politics... So it's unlikely that the corporate jungle or media outlets had much to do with who got voted in.
But even if we're talking about Washington politics - it's still the voters fault that things are the way they are. Or, rather, the citizenship in general.
It is your responsibility as a citizen to participate in the democratic process. You're supposed to educate yourself and then show up to vote. If you don't vote, or if you don't bother to educate yourself, you're part of the problem.
Re:Shocker (Score:1, Insightful)
and things have changed how?
Oh, yeah, people appointed by corporations (or at least backed with corporate millions to drown out their opponent's message) do that for us now.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:1, Insightful)
I personally don't think it is ok.
But it's not lawyers who are pocketing 2/3 of our wealth.
It is capitalists.
Since 1970 the GDP has tripled, but wages have remained flat or even declines, while the wealthiest 1% have seen their worth increase 300%.
Most Americans don't even understand how lopsided the distribution of wealth, income and growth in wealth and income has become.
The way that most of the truly wealthy in america have become wealthy is to inherit.
Lawyers are peons in america. Just like you. They work for a living. Just like you. Some make more than others, just like you.
Leave the lawyers alone. Worry about the trust funders.
Re:Free Legal care! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is NOT funny. It is downright Insightful.
The problem is Trial Lawyers are in the pocket of the (D) party, so nationalizing Legal Care like they just did with Health Care is not really going to happen. Not to mention most of those serving in the Legislature are lawyers (on both sides of the isle)
I always thought that lawyers writing laws was a conflict of interest. I wonder why that has never been addressed before.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:1, Insightful)
Risk!
Cases like this are risky endeavors for lawyers. Clients don't have many choices in this kind of case because they are very difficult if not impossible to win. The lawyer and the client, before the case was even filed, assigned value to the risk in a mutually agreed to contract. Now that the risk has been played out and the plaintiff has won, the outcome looks unfair. Before the case, only a crazy person would take the case, even with the huge payout potential. After the case, that crazy person that went all-or-nothing when no one else would is lambasted by a bunch of uninvolved bystanders for being greedy.
Furthermore, for every case where a plaintiff's lawyer wins and collects a large contingent fee, 50 cases go by where the lawyer recoups no money whatsoever because they bet big and lost.
But have fun flaming lawyers this morning because of how morally outraged you are that the bloodsucking lawyers are ruining everyone's lives. If you want to put in caps on lawyer's fees we can forget about these kind of cases b/c no lawyer will be willing to take the risk.
Re:Associated costs (Score:5, Insightful)
This. An IT professional will do more free work than a doctor or lawyer would ever dream of. Some people have legal problems... everyone has problems with windows.
If an IT professional were legally liable if they mess up something when doing free work, would any of them still do it?
Re:Associated costs (Score:3, Insightful)
bullshit. you have no recourse if you asked a lawyer in a bar about legal advice, act on said advice and get burned by it.
just like you have no recourse if you ask a car mechanic about a funny noise at your local coffee shop, only to find out the it was something else entirely.
In fact you may well have a legal recourse in both of those situations. If you ask someone for advice on a subject in which they are considered an expert - for example, for a lawyer, the law - then they can be liable in negligence if they give advice (simplifying quite a bit):
-That falls below the standard that could reasonably be expected of somebody in their position
-In a situation where a reasonable person would foresee that the advice would be relied on.
Re:Wow, just... wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Is 2/3 a high amount? Yes. But do you know exactly what was in that bill? Most likely the lawyers had to answer every motion, address every detail that the school district would throw at them in order to even get the suit to proceed. Being the school district, the lawyers would probably have to fight motions to dismiss as the school would argue that they can't be sued as part of state. Then even if they could be sued, everything fell under protected state behaviors, etc. That's a lot of time on a lawyer's part and time = money. Even a case that is settled like this takes up boxes and boxes of so called "paperwork."
I understand what you're saying, doesn't make it right. I don't care what's in that bill or how many boxes of paperwork goes into a case, 425,000 USD for a settlement is ridiculous at any level. For 425,000 dollars, that better be a Supreme Court ruling... unfortunately, such a ruling would total millions I imagine.
I'm aware of post education certification and continued education for Lawyers, Doctors et al. Lawyers seem to make more than mechanical engineers, construction engineers, architects and a fair share of medical professions. In spite of all of this, and the jokes about modern health care, still poor people have access to a doctor. As opposed to the legal system, there is no access for poor people we know this, otherwise the RIAA and their John Doe lawsuits wouldn't be so successful at extortion. You can not afford a court battle, there is no protection for you. There is no legal equivalent of Medicare, there is no legal equivalent of Free Health Clinics, there is no legal equivalent of the fact your state taxes pays for the construction engineers that build the roads and water systems. There's no legal equivalent of you consulting an accountant to start a business.
I don't care how expensive their school is. I don't care how expensive their paralegals are. I don't care about their bills, they are lawyers so they should be able to drag the costs down themselves by suing those who overcharge them... I don't know.
The system needs to be fixed, there is no excuse for taking 425k from a 600k settlement. The financial aspects are ridiculous, the legal representation is ridiculous (where a large corporation can take an individual to court... what bullshit).
Re:Associated costs (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if you're legally liable or not. Once you touch someone's computer, all future problems become YOUR problem, and they expect you to fix it for free.
This is why I pretty much refuse to do anything like that outside of my job, free or not, unless you happen to be my parents or other similarly close relation.
Besides, I work with computers all day. I don't want to work on my *own* computer when I get home, let alone someone else's...
Why lawyers? See below (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, ever faced that stern-faced lady in HR who, with tight lips, told you that you can basically go F yourself and they are not going to do anything about the asshole you was making life hell for you?
Well, a lawyer comes in handy, you know, for talking to that lady.
Re:Associated costs (Score:3, Insightful)
That most definitely works. Another option is to switch to Linux, and forget everything you know about Windows. Then you can look them straight in the eye and say that you haven't a clue about their problem.
Re:Wrong charges, no good outcome possible. (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. But the FBI didn't really want to get involved in pursuing child pornography trafficking charges against a school
Maybe what we need is a legal process for the people to force those charged with enforcing the law to actually enforce the law. When a prosecutor has knowledge of a crime and refuses to act, that's aiding and abetting. Prosecute him. Prosecutorial immunity is just begging for corruption.