
Cutting Class Action Agency Costs: Lessons from the Public Company
Class action reform could take a lesson from U.S. public company governance, I argue in a new working paper, available here.
Class actions and public companies have a lot in common. Class action scholars routinely explain problems in class action litigation, such as excessive attorneys’ fees and settlements that shortchange the class, as “agency costs.”[1] Corporate law scholars frame the problems that beset the governance of U.S. public companies in the same terms. It is also the case that the agency relationship between class counsel and class members looks similar to that between executives and shareholders in U.S. … Read more