StarKist Class Action Payment

S

Sue J

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Feb 28, 2007
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3,683
Got this email last week from PAYPAL -

KCC Class Action Services, LLC has sent you $2.38 USD.
This amount represents your total payment in the Hendricks v. StarKist Co. Settlement. This payment is the Settlement Benefit to which you are entitled for the eligible claim in accordance with the settlement that has been approved by the Court.

I didn't even remember this claim until the payment showed up. I don't know how long ago this was filed but it's nice to know that eventually some money showed up. We don't eat a lot of tuna and I'm not attached to any brand (although I do like the one at Aldi) so I don't know how damaged I was by whatever this lawsuit was about!

I'm going to go lookup Hendricks v. StarKist and see what it was all about. Next I will research how to invest my $2.38.

Anybody else get the cash from this?
 
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I never heard of this one. I remember applying for class action against Visa or Mastercard in regard to foreign transaction fees. Never heard another word. That was years ago.
 
Received mine in the mail yesterday $5.03 coupon good on Starkist purchase. Works for me.
 
Class action lawsuits make lawyers rich and shareholders poorer, I can’t imagine why people participate.
 
Class action lawsuits are the only legal remedy available to stop some organizations from engaging in behavior that negatively affects others.
 
Vacation4us said:
Class action lawsuits make lawyers rich and shareholders poorer, I can’t imagine why people participate.
Click to expand...

I live in Michigan. There was some class action suit here recently about magazines selling subscriber's names.

This summer I received 2 checks, several weeks apart...one was for $98 and some change and the other was for $87 and some change.

When I went to the bank to cash the first check, I walked up to the teller window and proceeded to sign the check. The teller said, "I'll bet that check is for $98.xx". I picked up the check and looked at it, trying to figure out how the teller knew the exact amount. Turns out, tons of people had come in that day with their identical class action checks, too.

I don't have any current magazine subscriptions, and never did have more than one or two, so this settlement was HUGE, imho.

omni
 
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I got about $600 back from a stock related class action suit once. Typically though I get just a few bucks or nothing at all.
 
COcheesehead said:
I never heard of this one. I remember applying for class action against Visa or Mastercard in regard to foreign transaction fees. Never heard another word. That was years ago.
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Yeah, that was many years ago. I did receive a pretty substantial settlement check from that one but it was almost three (?) years after I joined the suit.
 
The proper measure is not the absolute dollars you received, but how it compared to any individual damages you suffered. If you suffered only $1.00 damages, you have more than been made whole. I brought a class action suit several years back regarding price fixing in e-books, and every individual who was harmed received almost three times their actual damages. It could have been as little as about $9.00, but some of the payments to consumers were for hundreds of dollars.
 
The largest settlement we ever got was from the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, which paid out four figure amounts in a couple of different years. Some of it was on W-2s, some on 1099s, so taxes were really a pain.

It's impossible to say if we were damaged by the behavior of the companies involved though. If their actions actually suppressed the salaries of their employees in our area, then our damage was far greater than the settlement amount. But on the other hand, if the only thing they did was prevent us from getting jobs at the Silicon Valley offices of the other defendants, then we had no damage at all because we never had a desire to work at any of them. We'll never know, but we did accept the money.
 
Vacation4us said:
Class action lawsuits make lawyers rich and shareholders poorer, I can’t imagine why people participate.
Click to expand...

I'd presume that the costs are eventually passed on to consumers. Even if by some miracle not one person (other than the original filer) participated, the lawyers would still take their fees and the lawsuits would still continue to be filed.

I won't participate unless I'm fairly certain I bought the applicable product/service. I didn't participate in the StarKist class action. My smallest check was for 10 cents. My largest check was for over $600 for a TCPA violation. I got a 1099 for that one.
 
I used to think that only the lawyers profited but I've come to accept a class action suit is the type of enforcement that should discourage other companies from similar wrongdoing. Over time I benefit more from that than the $1.98 check.
 
MichaelB said:
Class action lawsuits are the only legal remedy available to stop some organizations from engaging in behavior that negatively affects others.
Click to expand...

++++

Or as my Dad used to say, hit 'em where it hurts. In the pocketbook.
 
Haven't received nor heard about this settlement, but I have consumed enough Tuna to fill several thermometers with mercury! (Hopefully not)
 
I once lost over $19,000 on stocks back in the World Com days. The SEC sued Smith Barney for fictitious stock ratings (everything was Strong Buy). I ended up getting the full $19,000 back as part of the fine Smith Barney had to pay the SEC. Seems the head "analyst" was giving strong buys on a few communications stocks in order to get his kid into a elite day care in NYC. No, I'm not making this up.

This was not a class action lawsuit. Had it been, I probably would have received $1.90 instead of $19,000.
 
Made me look it up:

The Lawsuit claims that StarKist Co. ("StarKist") under-filled certain 5 oz. canned tuna products in violation of state and federal law. StarKist denies that it underfilled its products and denies that it did anything wrong. The Court did not rule in favor of Plaintiff or StarKist. Instead, the parties agreed to a Proposed Settlement to avoid the expense and risks of continuing the lawsuit.
Click to expand...

From here: https://www.tunalawsuit.com/home.aspx

Click on Court Documents and then Plaintiff's complaint for more info.

I agree that in some cases a Class Action Suit is the only way to get a large company to listen. In this case, it sounds like the lawyers got a huge payout (I can't find a firm statement of how much, but looks like around $4million) for claiming cans were 1% to 17% under-filled, and customers got some coupons for free cans of tuna (from what I can gather, about $8million total).

This one was for the lawyers.
 
Gumby said:
The proper measure is not the absolute dollars you received, but how it compared to any individual damages you suffered. If you suffered only $1.00 damages, you have more than been made whole. I brought a class action suit several years back regarding price fixing in e-books, and every individual who was harmed received almost three times their actual damages. It could have been as little as about $9.00, but some of the payments to consumers were for hundreds of dollars.
Click to expand...


That was my favorite class action . I got settlements from Amazon & Barnes & Noble for my book addiction.
 
This is the 1st time I heard about this class-action lawsuit. So, I looked it up. If you received a payment, you had to be filing a claim back a few years ago.


The case dates back to 2013, when California consumer Patrick Hendricks sued StarKist, accusing it of underfilling 5-ounce cans of tuna. StarKist eventually agreed to settle the case, inviting any shopper who had purchased any of the affected varieties of its products to file a claim “for either a cash payment of $25, or $50 in product vouchers redeemable for StarKist tuna products”.

That was in 2015.

Thanks to the promise of a big payout (“Free money!” many blogs and local news stories proclaimed), the claim form went viral. And that caused problems that are still being worked out today.

StarKist set aside enough money to cover up to 200,000 claims. Instead, more than two and a half million people submitted claims for cash or coupons...
Click to expand...

Because there are 10x more claimants than anticipated, people now get either $2.38 cash or $5.03 in coupon, which is 1/10 of what they originally projected.
 
I wonder if they moved their manufacturing to China, Vietnam or India if they would be subject or liable for a lawsuit like this?
 
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