Driving Claim Rates in Class Actions

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their allies, consumer class actions deliver miniscule percentages of funds to class members. While the U.S. Chamber and its allies often engage in pencil engineering and fuzzy math, we need to be better at returning money to class members.

There are multiple reasons why consumer class action claim and fund distributions rates are typically low. Some are about barriers to participation. Some are more about human cognition. The good news is that class counsel can impact this process and improve outcomes.

The goal of this webinar is to provide practitioners with concrete strategies and steps to improve claim rates. But there is a bigger agenda beneath, including resetting expectations on claim rates and achieving claim rates that rebut U.S. Chamber criticism.

What You Will Learn

• How to draft appropriate settlement agreement language
• How to take advantage of best practices for drafting claim process and claim forms
• How to use of data sources to locate class members and get their money back to them

Presenter

David Sugerman is an Oregon trial lawyer with noteworthy experience in class actions and complex litigation. His notable results include serving as lead counsel in Scharfstein v. BP West Coast Products, LLC, an nine-figure consumer protection trial win against BP for illegal debit card surcharges at the pump. The case settled on appeal for the face-amount of the judgment, plus interest. In addition to the Scharfstein case, David has led a team that has achieved eight-figure settlements in several consumer class action cases. In the last three settlements, David’s team has achieved claim rates of between 55 and 99 percent.