Legal News

Tort Reformer Seeks to Scuttle Settlement in Video Game Sex Suit

By Dan Slater

Update: At the hearing today, the judge reserved decision on whether to approve the settlement, according to Chad Bray of the DJ Wires.

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As Loyal LB’ers know, we’re not that into numbers games. But whenever there’s an opportunity to compare attorneys fees to settlement payouts in class actions, we always find ourselves reaching for the calculator.

Which we did after reading a story by the NYT’s Jonathan Glater about a class action lawsuit against the makers of video-game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The plaintiffs sued not for the game’s violence — a more typical gripe about GTA — but for sex scenes buried within the software that they weren’t told about. According to the NYT, any buyer upset about the game’s sexual content could file a claim under a settlement the lawyers struck with Rockstar Games and its parent, Take-Two Interactive. Yet, of the millions who reportedly bought the San Andreas version after its 2004 release, only 2,676 filed claims.

At $5 to $35 per claim (and, sometimes a sanitized copy of the game thrown into the deal), Take-Two’s lawyers, led by Debevoise’s Jeffrey Jacobson, say the defendants expect to pay out about $30,000. The attorneys fees? Plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, Seth Lesser, and lawyers at 10 other law firms, will split $1.3 million. (For those keeping score at home, that’s a 43:1 ratio of fees to settlement.)

But one Grand Theft Auto player, who happens to be an attorney, doesn’t think so. Theodore H. Frank, a leading tort reform advocate who directs the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute, told the NYT, “There are two possibilities. Possibility one is they have a meritorious lawsuit and they’re selling out the class for attorneys’ fees. The other possibility is that, and frankly I think this is the more likely possibility, they brought a meritless lawsuit that had no business being brought to court at all.” Frank is seeking to quash the deal.

“The merits of the case were clear,” Lesser said. “Otherwise it would’ve been settled a long time ago.”

Today, SDNY judge Shirley Wohl Kram will decide, when the attorneys appear before her to get the settlement stamped.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).