Chicago attorney Jay Edelson may be one of those people. He seems to delight in filing class action suits against successful companies for ridiculously insignificant alleged torts that he claims have somehow annoyed or inconvenienced customers or the general public. He sues for way more than he's willing to settle for, apparently, in the hope that his targets will want to avoid court and just pay him to go away.
When someone pulls the same stunt on him, however, he cries foul.
According to a recent article on Forbes.com, Edelson sued Caribbean Cruise Line “on behalf of hundreds of thousands of potential plaintiffs who allegedly received cruise sales pitches, disguised as political surveys, on their cell phones.”
He sued Nationstar Mortgage for making “automated telephone calls,” Walgreens for “sending its customers prescription reminders to customers’ cell phones,” Facebook for “allegedly violating Illinois' biometrics privacy law by employing software designed to suggest 'tags' on photos posted on its pages.”
Edelson also sued Grubhub for “sending text messages promoting restaurant partners” and GroupOn for “using Instagram photos to promote deals.”
Now he's suing Corpus Christi attorney Christopher Bandas, and others, for allegedly shaking him down while he allegedly was shaking everybody else down.
Bandas has apparently interposed objections to some of Edelson's multiple coerced settlements over the years, thereby delaying or otherwise affecting anticipated payouts.
It's one thing for Edelson to play games like that, quite another for someone else to pull it on him.
According to Forbes, Edelson accuses Bandas, et al. of “engaging in a pattern of racketeering and extortion as 'professional objectors,' who use the law to extract payoffs . . . in exchange for withdrawing objections holding up the completion of class action settlement payments.”
We can't help feeling he's getting what's coming to him.