The issue raised was that the "privacy non-profits" were 1) law schools that the plaintiff's attorneys went to, or 2) non-profits that Google already consistently donated money to. So it's a settlement that predominantly consisted of altering the timing of regular donations by Google plus a kickback to the attorney's law schools.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-will-take-a-close...
Also quite surprising that Google even bothered to defend themselves in the first place, you have to have sunk pretty low already not to realize that sharing search queries with third parties is an invasion of privacy post the AOL search engine scandal.
Uh, they settled. There was no case defended in court, they cut a deal. That's what this is about. The settlement paid off the named plaintiffs and their attorneys, and gave money to some groups working toward this particular issue as non-profits. And everyone involved thought that was OK.
But the plaintiffs in this suit say that this was inappropriate and the damages should have been paid to those harmed and not to charities that claim to represent their interests. But the challenge itself is not filed on their behalf either.
Fundamentally this is an attack on the privacy groups, and more broadly on the idea of a class action settlement at all. Those are political goals. This is fundamentally a politically motivated suit.
But it's an interesting legal question nonetheless, IMHO.
Let me start with saying I agree fully with this.
But I don't necessarily agree with it being a broad attack on the idea of a class action settlement. [1] and [2] give decent breakdowns of why this settlement was problematic. The charities chosen were themselves political choices - it was distributed to convenient charities to both sides. Some were charities Google were already known to give funding/donations to, and the other were law schools which had ties to the plaintiff's lawyers.
If you're going to invoke the cy pres doctrine on a class action settlement, don't make the recipient selection of the charitable donations so obviously politically motivated. If you're just going to leverage cy pres doctrine to divert class action funds to favored recipients, then be ready to potentially have the cy pres doctrine re-examined and criteria tightened.
[1] https://searchengineland.com/google-involved-in-supreme-cour... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-will-take-a-close...
That doesn't really square with the evidence though. I mean, the points you cite are in fact arguments in this case, and I agree they're interesting legal arguments. But they don't explain why the case was brought.
I think it's reasonably clear that the plaintiffs here (not the ones in the original suit!) don't really care about whether or not millions of Google users get compensated a few dollars. What the plaintiffs want is a broad SCOTUS precedent putting a new requirement on class action settlements, and thus making future class action cases harder (i.e. more expensive, more risky) to pursue.
Ted Frank has been trying to radically remake class action law for years. He raises money for his non-profit expressly for this purpose.
So yes, the appeal is most definitely politically motivated. But the original suit was not.
I would be for courts to calculate compensation to plaintiffs as a ratio of, but on top of the award, i.e., if the punitive or compensatory award is X, the plaintiff's ratio is a minimum of 1/5, with total award being 1.2X.
I am not all that against blood sucking lawyers taking a pound of flesh and am open to the notion of their compensation being controlled and limited (which would NEVER happen considering the power and strangle hold the legal profession has on government ... bar (yes, that's intentional) lawyers from government and lobbying maybe???).
The benchmark in the Ninth Circuit is 25% of the common fund, but district courts almost always also ask for a "lodestar cross-check," which is the hours expended by the plaintiffs' firms multiplied by their customary hourly rates, plus expenses. It's often a very contentious battle to establish a reasonable hourly rate and will turn on the relevant legal market (SF has higher rates than, say, Tulsa even for the same sort of work), the attorney's experience, the results obtained, and so on. And the judges often cut hours, saying they were duplicative or excessive for whatever reason. This can be used to increase or (more commonly) decrease from the 25% benchmark.