Can these settlements be redeemed?
It may or may not be the dirty little secret of the legal trade, but it does seem to be a secret: In big class-action lawsuit settlements, how many consumers actually cash in the "awards" won by plaintiffs' lawyers?
Legal gadfly Steven Wineberg of Exeter, N.H., was one of almost a million New Englanders (as was I) who "won" a class-action settlement against cable purveyor MediaOne in 2002. MediaOne -- now
"I suspect that the total redeemed by the class is not only far less than $17-$20 million, but far less than even the $3 million in attorneys' fees," Wineberg e-mailed me. I think he's right. I remember receiving the densely printed 3-by-5 postcard telling me how to file my claim -- it would've depended on where I lived and how long I had been a customer -- and doing absolutely nothing. "We tried to make it as easy and user-friendly as possible," MediaOne lawyer Lisa Heller told me.
Be that as it may, why won't anyone involved in the settlement say how much MediaOne actually paid out? Wineberg asked MediaOne's law firm and the Garden City Group, which administered the settlement, for information about redemption rates. They blew him off. I asked Heller, Garden City, and plaintiffs' lawyer Fredric Ellis for the numbers, and they blew me off, too: Ellis said he didn't know. Garden City never returned my call.
Heller blew me off in the same way she dismissed Wineberg, citing confidentiality requirements that prohibit her from identifying individual subscribers. But, of course, I had zero interest in individual subscribers. I just wanted to know how little MediaOne got away with paying.
I admit this seems like a narrow interest, but I recently fell into a second, similar "class," with the exact same result. Last year, the Poland Spring water people settled a class-action claim in which it was alleged, among other things, that the company's legendarily pristine stream had been contaminated by sewage and a garbage dump. Poland Spring denied the charges but agreed to fork over $1.35 million to the lawyers who sued them. In addition, the company gave its customers $8 million worth of coupons over five years and donated $2.75 million to charity.
Fortune magazine called the settlement "pretty standard: next to undetectable benefits for us -- some discount coupons and whatnot -- and $1.35 million in cash for the plaintiffs attorneys." I talked to one of the lawyers who sued Poland Spring, and he had no idea how many customers had redeemed the coupons. The company never got back to me.
I have a wildly overpriced Poland Spring water cooler at home, and I don't remember being offered any coupons. But I did talk to someone who did get a coupon and did redeem it -- Fredric Ellis, the plaintiffs' lawyer in the MediaOne case. "Of course I redeemed it," he said. "Why wouldn't you?"
Under the radar
Some Harvard children -- to me, anyone under 40 is a child -- from the class of 2000 have been ginning up a possible rival to the Harvard alumni magazine. You can check out their jazzy website at 02138magazine.com, which lays out their Gen-Y take on how great it is to have graduated from the World's Greatest University.
"There isn't really a publication out there for graduates who want an open and honest debate about what's going on at Harvard, who want reliable news about the campus, and who also want stories about all the extraordinary alumni who are out there," publisher-presumptive Bom Kim said. "Here's an example: We don't really have a sense of what Larry Summers is like. People don't know what to make of the radical shift in this role of the president. That's an article for us."
Kim & Co. started signing up charter subscribers just a few days ago. The plan is to start publishing 02138 -- six annual issues free for Harvard grads, $42 for the unwashed -- before the end of the year.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His
e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
