Center for Class Action Fairness
| Industry | Law |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 2009 |
| Founder | Ted Frank |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C., United States |
| Website | Website |
The Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) is a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law firm, founded by Ted Frank in June 2009 to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements. It is a 501(c)(3) organization.
According to The American Lawyer, as of March 2011, the CCAF had filed objections to 17 settlements, with eight objections pending in federal district courts, and had been successful on six of them. The CCAF has objected to settlements throughout the United States, particularly in cases where class action lawyers receive cash payments but the plaintiff class receives only discount coupons for further products and services from the defendant company. It has distanced itself from other firms that make money by holding up class action settlements until they themselves are paid off. The CCAF has raised objections to class action settlements involving the Grand Theft Auto "Hot Coffee" minigame, Honda Civic Hybrids, Apple backdating, A.G. Edwards, Bluetooth headsets, and the Cobell Indian Trust.
Ted Frank was inspired to establish the Center from his success in objecting to the class action settlement in the Grand Theft Auto consumer fraud case where class members would have received under $30,000 while the attorneys were asking for $1 million.
In June 2009, Frank founded the public-interest non-profit law firm Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements. The firm is described by Frank as "a "guerrilla" operation with a shoestring budget". CCAF was initially a project of Donors Trust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund, which paid him as an independent contractor to manage the project, relying on donors from charitable foundations and independent individuals to fund it. To date, the CCAF has accepted only about 40 percent of the requests it has received to object to a settlement and Frank has said that if it is a good settlement or close enough to the line, he wouldn't "risk creating bad precedent." As of 2010, the CCAF has three staff attorneys, including Frank.
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