WILL THE SUPREME COURT CRIPPLE THIS DEMOCRATIC SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP? Class-action plaintiffs lawyers are likely keeping a VERY close eye on whether the High Court will agree to hear a challenge to settlements that enrich counsel but provide little or nothing to alleged victims. The challenge comes from Ted Frank, director of the Center for Class-Action Fairness at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Frank’s challenge is to the decision by the U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th District to uphold the settlement in Joshua D. Poertner v. The Gillette Co., et. al. in which the trial lawyers got $5.7 million and 99 percent of the estimated 7.26 million class members got zilch. Poertner is just one of the many class-action settlements in which the plaintiffs’ lawyers get rich and the plaintiffs get … stiffed.

Rules vary widely among federal courts on the metrics for deciding whether a settlement is fair and reasonable. Frank hopes the High Court will nationalize something like the Seventh Circuit’s dictum that “the attorney award must be a fraction of the amount actually realized by the class …” Four of the justices must agree to hear the case. The decision will be made public March 21.

Democratic office-holders, candidates and campaign fund-raisers may be paying even closer attention here than the class-action trial attorneys because the latter are routinely among the former’s biggest funders. If the High Court throws a wrench in these settlement bonanzas, it could blow a huge hole in Democratic Party’s bank accounts.