Lawyers Claim Hot Coffee Lawsuit Fee

In what can only be described as a shocking twist, lawyers in the Hot Coffee class action lawsuit have requested an obscenely inflated fee for their services.

A report on Overlawyered.com revealed that the suit resulted in 2676 claimants who were awarded various levels of damages, up to a maximum of $35.00. The bulk of the class, 2050 claimants, were awarded $5.00, while a small number were awarded replacement game disks with the Hot Coffee code removed. In all, the total cash value of the settlement reached a maximum of $26,505, although the report indicates the actual amount will likely be less. The seven "representative" members of the suit are seeking a further $24,500.

The lawyers involved, meanwhile, have claimed their services in the suit are valued at slightly over $1.3 million, but in a move reflecting the generosity and selflessness typical of the legal industry, have discounted their total fees request to a flat $1 million. Attorneys claim the amount, which represents 3774 percent of the settlement, is justified by the inclusion of expenses such as administration and disk replacement to the settlement amount, as well as an $870,000 cy pres award made to the National PTA and the ESRB, which they claim boosts the actual settlement amount to over $2 million.

Take-Two announced it had settled all outstanding class action suits resulting from the Hot Coffee controversy in November 2007, agreeing to provide replacement disks and/or cash settlements of up to $35 to anyone willing to swear they would not have purchased the game had they known about the inclusion of the Hot Coffee code. At the time, Take-Two had set aside a cash reserve to cover the cost of the settlement, which the company estimated could reach a maximum of $2.75 million plus legal fees.

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But it's all about not letting our children's children seeing sex! Not money at all.

Is anything in the media actually what it seems to be about anymore?

All of this was for the money? Say it ain't so!

Too bad the lawyers' greed doesn't make national headlines like the Hot Coffee content did.

The_root_of_all_evil:

... Priceless...

Anyways, bah, the layers can settle it amongst themselves. When it starts to affect my games is when I start drawing blood.

I probably wouldn't have known about Hot Coffee if it weren't for the press being unnecessarily given to it. Luckily, this was about the time I was planning on purchasing the game anyway, so, yes, I gave it a shot. I found nothing good to say about it at all and uninstalled it after about 20 minutes, and yet I still found myself defending it. It is completely inaccessible without modification of the game, and that shouldn't matter at all since the only people who should be playing it in the first place are of the age where in-game sex is perfectly acceptable as well, which is a point lost on so many. That is why I defended it in spite of my own feelings about it (that, and I enjoy a good argument).

In short, overly protective yet utterly clueless parents and "lawyer stereotypes aren't going away so long as these guys are around" lawyers fall into that group of people who need to be shut up because they clearly aren't capable of doing it themselves.

The way I tend to prattle on, I probably belong in that group as well.

I love how dryly you guys present such 'news'. Its great humour which I think only I pick up on. :P

One million? What? Do lawyers only write with golden ink and speak in licensed terms?

1 Million? One abbreviation: ROFLMAO!