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Clodfobble · 01-12-2008, 11:38 PM

W...T...F?!

No offense to lawyers here, but I freaking hate the intricacies of the legal system.

Background: In August of 2004 my employer imploded. When all was said and done, we were ultimately never paid for the last 3.5 weeks of work. We dutifully filed our claims with the bankruptcy court and were told that we should not expect anything to come of it for many years, if ever. Meanwhile, some of the more bitter/pro-active employees determined that aside from not paying us our actual salaries, the company had violated the WARN Act: a law (in Texas only maybe?) which basically says you must either pay 2 months' severance or give 60 days' warning when massive layoffs (say, the whole company) happen. So we all shrugged and let them file a class action suit to claim that money as well, thinking we'd never see a dime either way, and moved on with our lives.

About 6 months ago we were informed that the class-action law firm had stuck with it over the years, and the judge had partially ruled in our favor. So IF there were any money to be had at all (still a dubious possibility,) we were all now entitled to an additional $1750, minus one third for the lawyers. Great, whatever.

Today, several days after the deadline to opt-out of the class action lawsuit, somebody goes through the fine print (in the paperwork that most of us never received because neither these lawyers nor the bankruptcy court in NY give half a shit about keeping their mailing lists up-to-date) and determines that, as far as us non-lawyers can tell, being part of this class-action thing (which we all are by default, unless we opted-out) means we waive any other money claims, including our unpaid wages, which are in most cases much higher than $1750-minus-one-third. And it's looking like there will be money to pay us after all... so essentially, we have just let some class action lawyers lower our payouts while taking a third of it. I refuse to believe that they didn't damn well know this was what they were doing; they had all our salary information as part of their "severance pay" calculations.

Maybe we're wrong. Maybe we still have both the wage claim and the class-action claim. But I'm pretty pissed off about how complicated and slow the whole fucking process is. I was happier back when I had assumed we were getting nothing and forgotten about it.

01-12-2008, 11:38 PM	#1396
Clodfobble UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 20,012	W...T...F?! No offense to lawyers here, but I freaking hate the intricacies of the legal system. Background: In August of 2004 my employer imploded. When all was said and done, we were ultimately never paid for the last 3.5 weeks of work. We dutifully filed our claims with the bankruptcy court and were told that we should not expect anything to come of it for many years, if ever. Meanwhile, some of the more bitter/pro-active employees determined that aside from not paying us our actual salaries, the company had violated the WARN Act: a law (in Texas only maybe?) which basically says you must either pay 2 months' severance or give 60 days' warning when massive layoffs (say, the whole company) happen. So we all shrugged and let them file a class action suit to claim that money as well, thinking we'd never see a dime either way, and moved on with our lives. About 6 months ago we were informed that the class-action law firm had stuck with it over the years, and the judge had partially ruled in our favor. So IF there were any money to be had at all (still a dubious possibility,) we were all now entitled to an additional $1750, minus one third for the lawyers. Great, whatever. Today, several days after the deadline to opt-out of the class action lawsuit, somebody goes through the fine print (in the paperwork that most of us never received because neither these lawyers nor the bankruptcy court in NY give half a shit about keeping their mailing lists up-to-date) and determines that, as far as us non-lawyers can tell, being part of this class-action thing (which we all are by default, unless we opted-out) means we waive any other money claims, including our unpaid wages, which are in most cases much higher than $1750-minus-one-third. And it's looking like there will be money to pay us after all... so essentially, we have just let some class action lawyers lower our payouts while taking a third of it. I refuse to believe that they didn't damn well know this was what they were doing; they had all our salary information as part of their "severance pay" calculations. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe we still have both the wage claim and the class-action claim. But I'm pretty pissed off about how complicated and slow the whole fucking process is. I was happier back when I had assumed we were getting nothing and forgotten about it.