Don't promise Champagne, if you don't supply Champagne

A wine-related story, and FWIW I’m in agreement with the people bringing the lawsuit. Marketing regularly makes claims with only a tenuous link to the truth, so when there is a chance to call these untruths, I’m glad people do.

Sometimes this sort of thing can be taken too far, e.g. the Champagne Jayne case, and the wine sold as Champagne from the Swiss village of the same name.

It is not entirely clear from the article what Sunwing promised. If it was just “champagne service” and a “champagne vacation” that was promised, I would probably side with the Sunwing, even if it is a pretty silly use of the word “champagne”. But of course if the customers were specifically told they would get a glass of Champagne, then that is what they should get.

Lawsuits are the new way of the world. To quote John Milton from The Devil’s Advocate:

“Did you know there are more students in law school than there are lawyers walking the Earth? We’re COMING OUT! Guns blazing!”

Somebody better tell Steamboat too!

Just noticed it’s a class action lawsuit. That means the plaintiffs will each get checks for $4.69 while every lawyer involved will get hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So corporations should be able to get away with fraud so long as they only defraud each individual out of a small amount of money?

Where exactly did I say that? My post was a complaint that the lawyers get rich off these class action suits, while the people who suffered the injustice (however large or small) get shafted.

I blame Robin Leach.

So tell me how these rights are to be vindicated. Not that this is a particularly sympathetic story, but you seem to be on to a better way. I’m all ears.

I think Ralph describes it correctly. Find the smallest “harm” suffered by the largest number, get your plaintiffs a couple bucks each but take 40% of the overall pot for your fee. And then consumers pay it back in higher prices, and the only winners were the lawyers on both sides.

Except if and to the extent you think the avoidance of these lawsuits does a significant social good, as Neal does, and I think there are valid arguments both ways.

Suppose the Acme Bank begins adding a spurious and entirely undeserved fee of 58 cents every month to every checking account it has. No one in their right mind is going to file a lawsuit over $6.96 a year in ill-gotten fees. Customers call and complain and they are shrugged off. Cancel the account if you want.

A plaintiffs’ lawyer comes along and files a class action suit to recoup the $6.96 a year the bank has collected from its 2,000,000 customers, totaling ~$14MM for each year the fee was in place. The lawyer works for 2 years in litigation – traveling around the country to meet with class members, find experts, take depositions, serve and respond to discovery, file and oppose motions, attend hearings and mediation sessions. All of the costs – travel, experts, office support, attorney time – are a bet against a favorable result. If no result is reached, the attorneys end up working for 2 years for free.

A settlement is reached that results in an agreement to stop charging the bogus fee and, say, a check for $3.22 for each class member for each year. They also get attorneys fees of 30-40% of the total settlement amount for two years work by a team of lawyers. In the absence of the litigation, the bank would have had no incentive to withdraw the fee, and no customer would have had any incentive to sue.

That’s the way the system works, like it or not. Unless you think the federal government is going after the bank – and are willing to dramatically increase the DOJ budget to permit that – this is the way these practices are policed.

And BTW, I am in class action defense (although not in financial services). These Ps lawyers are my adversaries. Some of them are rapacious scum. But your choices are pretty limited in dealing with the problems these lawyers attack as a group.

Porsche recently settled a class action lawsuit that they said they would fight all the way. The issue was that light interior dashboards caused reflections that were dangerous. The settlement was that 2007-present owners with beige interiors could get reimbursed for part of the cost of polarized sunglasses. Unfortunately I own a 2006 and already have sunglasses. neener

This won’t cost Porsche much except for the nuisance attorney fees.I agree with Neal’s rapacious scum comment but that is mainly because I am related to one of them.

My take on this is that if it is that important to the one that it be champagne, not sparkling wine, then inquire as to what exactly will be served. Most people who are in to champagne know the term can be used loosely and it bears clarification. in this case, we`re talking a glass. Pretty frivolous IMHO.

I don’t disagree. I was not endorsing this case or these lawyers. Just explaining how our system works

I don’t really have anything useful to add, other than to note that this issue involves the use of “Champagne” as an adjective or adverb, rather than as a proper noun or place. We all know that the latter usages are widely regulated, but the former seems to me actually encouraged by the creators and promoters of Champagne (the wine, and the place), so it might be a little disingenuous to object to this usage (although in this case it was a consumer, I believe). Perhaps if they had used the uncapitalized “champagne”…

I’m having a party with a $5,000 entrance fee and everyone gets a mag of Grange for appearing. I didn’t say what kind of Grange wine did I?

Pretty sure every one of you would be pissed off and want to sue if I handed you that bottle for your $5,000 fee. Simply because the term is used for a very specific type of wine. In this case they are using a protected term for a specific regions wines and serving something else entirely.

I’d guess their mistake was not putting in the fine print it wasn’t real champagne??
Grange.jpg

For clarity, this sentence early in the article suggests they explicitly said they were serving champagne

Daniel Macduff booked a holiday to Cuba through Sunwing that advertised a complimentary on-board champagne toast.

The lawsuit is absurd.

They promised “champagne” not Champagne, the vernacular understood by the vast majority of the public for sparkling wine. Prior to 2006 this case would have been unfounded and irrelevant, now it is just irrelevant.
Principles, my ass, try pre-trial prep billing. Just prop up Macduff’s self righteousness and “Lay on, Macduff”.

I feel like I just walked in on someone else’s conversation. Someone named MacDuff.