Quote:
Originally Posted by htismaqe
You have no idea (or maybe you do).
My wife was part of a class action discrimination suit against one of the largest companies in the country. It took 15 years to settle and when all was said and done, she got about half what the lawyers did. The federal government took a sizeable chunk as well since the settlement was for "back wages". The company paid it out in installments, leading to getting two differentb1099's so she paid taxes twice.
In the end, she got about 20% net of her gross settlement amount.
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About 30 years ago now, a former roommate of my wife used her personal info to open several utility accounts in her name. The scumbag bitch didn't pay the bills, and eventually all those companies started coming after the wife to collect. She was easily able to prove that she had never lived in the locations associated with the bills, and all of them stopped bothering her except Ameritech (now Verizon). They'd come after her, she'd produce the proving documents, they'd go away for a few months, and then come after her again. This went on for a couple of years. Then they reported her to credit bureaus and sicced a really annoying collection agency on her. At that point we had had enough and hired a lawyer (we weren't married yet but lived together). He was a nasty ****er, and very effective. In the end, she won the case, the collection agency went out of business, and she ended up with a $12K settlement. The attorney, IIRC, collected about ten times that for himself. But we got $12K, so what the hell. It actually became established case law, although I don't know if it still is.