Six years from now, 400,000 people will get postcards in the mail telling them that they're part of a class action settlement over this.
The class action lawyers will get second houses with third boats.
The lawyers on Ticketmaster's side will get nice bonuses for saving the company money.
The 50,000 people who actually responded to the postcard will get 53¢ each.
Based off of past TicketMaster lawsuits, they'll probably just get ticketmaster coupons.
With money from TicketMaster. People scoff at the size of class action payouts to individuals, but if you're looking to deter bad behavior, the total money extracted is what matters.
The lawyers got a lot, I got a little, and everyone else got even less. From what I remember the judge presiding over the case decides how the money is split. It did end up costing Sharp a fair amount though, so that’s nice.
For years I've been getting emails, unsolicited, that have links ("Click here") that point at the likes of "www.The-XYZ-Company-class-action-settlement-for-real.com".
Are these legitimate? I have no way of knowing, since I'm not dumb enough to click them, and wouldn't trust what randos in forums say about those links. And the $4.44 settlement promises [0] do nothing to mitigate the possible ramifications of clicking through a possible phishing attempt.
[0] These settlements are always so worthless.
If you've never gotten a big payout from a class action it may simply reflect that you have not been in a class that was seriously injured by a wealthy company. Which isn't that surprising in a way. Companies do generally try to avoid injuring people severely, because if they don't they'll quickly be sued out of business.