Consumers Are The Losers In Class Action Lawsuits Even When They Win

From The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "Trial Lawyer Protection Act: A new study shows that consumers lose in most class actions:"

Out of 148 federal class actions reported by two major litigation publications in 2009, none of the cases went to trial and won a judgment for the plaintiffs. Zero. Fourteen percent of the cases remain pending. Of the 127 cases that had been resolved by September 2013, 35% were voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff, 31% were dismissed on the merits by the court and 33% were settled.***According to the study, only 33% of federal class actions settled compared with 67% for all federal cases.

It gets worse. Settlement details aren't always available, but in consumer class actions many class members don't collect their winnings at all and procedures to seek out class members and distribute the cash are rare. Mayer Brown says that "of the six cases in our data set for which settlement distribution data was public, five delivered funds to only miniscule percentages of the class: 0.000006%, 0.33%, 1.5%, 9.66%, and 12%."