The New York Times reports on class-action settlements that strip plaintiffs of any benefit. The article highlights a past settlement attorney Scott Kamber reached with Facebook, resulting in the company paying roughly $6.5 million to a new foundation that it would partly control, with the millions of plaintiffs in the class—who’d sued for a privacy violation—receiving nothing. According to the report, the Supreme Court could soon decide to hear the case, noting that “justices have been quite active in restricting other aspects of class-actions, and they may decide it is time to consider settlements that critics say leave plaintiffs worse off than when they started.” Meanwhile, Google has responded to a class-action complaint over Gmail privacy saying, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy” when sending messages to a Gmail account. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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