This is completely messed up because lawyers are not owed anything by the people. If the people of Flint suffer, why should the people of USA pay a few lawyers 220 million dollars?

Yes, the lawyers who bring the action also gets paid, but the victims will also be compensated. There is NO free legal assistance for suing someone for injuries you incur, you have to pay an attorney to take your case and file it till you get a judgment.

Furthermore, given the legal technicalities involved with suing the Federal Government you need a lawyer to do so, does this action have to be filed in Flint or in DC? You also have to serve the local federal Attorney, even if you are NOT suing that attorney by a different agency, You failed to serve the local Federal Attorney, your case will be dismissed for failure to do proper service. Sorry, individuals can sue the US Government, but attorneys know what is needed to do it right.

... that the class action suit itself is being directed at the WRONG people.

The whole problem was directly due to the officials of varying departments
of the city, county and State governments ... so why aren't *they* being sued?
(i.e., the people who CAUSED the problem for reasons of callous greed.)

In addition, with the (federal) EPA being sued, it will be the US taxpayer
as a whole that will be not only funding the entire legal farce (from the
defence side) but also paying any recompense (if suit is successful).

I might be wrong but I believe that *THIS* is what the previous post is
about rather than whether or not lawyers are required.



(If that wasn't the meaning of egalitegirl then sorry - but it is still my
question of "why" in any case.)

You are absolutely right about targeting the specific officials and I believe they must be made to pay for it out of their own pockets. Instead, the compensation will come from taxpayers. Thanks for the clarification but I also want to add that the concept of lawyers getting the lion's share of the money in class action suits and the litigants getting gift cards worth twenty dollars needs to be changed. We live in a system where lawyers thrive and I think that if only lawyers know to argue this case, we have a serious problem in the way rules are set up.

Thus a company that steals a dollar from a million customers made one million dollars and to get that dollar back each victim would have to hire a lawyer to get that dollar back. Given that in most such lawsuits the victim has to pay for their own attorney, most people do not sue and the company made a million dollars.

To get around this problem the class action law suit was invented. It permitted a victim to sue as a member of the class of victims for the whole million dollars. The plaintiff must be a victim. As a general rule the attorney who represent the victims gets paid, either out of the proceeds if attorney fees are NOT awarded (and in most cases they are NOT) or from the defendant if that is permitted by law (If a violation of a consumer protection law such attorney fees are permitted).

Thus if the victim each loss a dollar, they can not get more then what they loss thus all they can win is a dollar. In one class action I loss four dollars and received four dollars back. A gift card may be the best way to return such small amounts. Remember a judge has to approve the settlement and any of the victims can protest by writing. The problem is how do you return such small amounts.

As to attorneys fees, the attorneys put in a lot of time into these cases, and like the actual settlement must be approved by a judge. As long as the judge is presented a detail list of expenses and time spent and it appears to be accurate, it will be approved. It can ce challenged but almost never is for most class actions are for very small amounts.

As to large amounts, class actions are also use. In one case a developer of a housing development did bad work so he is being sued by the buyers of those homes in a class action lawsuit.

I know of another class action lawsuit brought by Public Housing Residence of Allegheny County for that county refused to put public housing into any local government unit that said no. That was illegal under both federal and state law but they did it for decades. It lead to the concentration of such housing in areas without jobs. The case was made a class action of every one in public housing in that county and they won. The result was the county was ordered to buy homes in the better communities in the county as public housing. Most residents of public housing saw no change, but it did open up homes closer to where the jobs are for some residents. Overall it was an improvement and the lawyers involved were paid for their time involved in that lawsuit. I hope you did not expect the people in public housing to pay those fees.

Class action lawsuits have there place in our legal system. Given the above what would you replace it with? Remember attorneys need to be paid and such lawsuits are NOT cheap. Local district attorneys do not want these case, and when they do take them they want paid. The same with state attorney generals. Thus it is up to private attorneys and they will only take on such cases if they are paid.

One group wants to abolish class action lawsuit, but that means if a company steals small amounts from a large group of people, they will get away with it. Is that what you want? It is the simplest way to make sure victims and attorneys get the same amount (ie nothing).

There is a lot of complaints about Class Action Lawsuits, but the propose solutions are worse then the problems with class action lawsuits.

a governor and his emergency manager do?

It was during the Congressional hearing a 2 or 3 months ago. There was the Governor and the Director of the EPA being questioned for hours.