Class action lawsuit- cellular "System access fees"

[ken0042]

Looks like there was a court ruling this week in the favour of the consumers, and now a lawyer is organizing a class action.
http://www.merchantlaw.com/cellular.html

I hate seeing the $7 fee every month on my bill. If it's a cost of doing business, then work it into the price. If every business did what cell, airlines, etc do, then our lives would be more complicated. Imagine ordering a pizza, and asking how much the pizza is. You are told $4 and you order it. Then the guy tells you you owe him $20 after fees.

My questions to our resident lawyers; is there any danger in signing up for this? ie- I really don't care if I only get 33% of a judgement back if it means no more of these fees. But I also don't want to submit my name, then be asked for a $500 retainer or anything.

[fredr123]

http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/ind...=142&Itemid=18

Slightly off topic, here's a recent article in Canadian Lawyer Magazine about the lawyer organizing the system access fee class action law suit.

[arsenal]

while we are at it, can we get data rates reduced as well? Maybe open up north america so all cell companies have access to Canadian / US / Mexican markets.

That would totally reduce prices, since there is more market share available for everyone.. mmmm competition is good.

[Slava]

Good old Tony Merchant. I'm going to leave a personal "issue/discussion" I had with Tony out of this. But that article paints a pretty interesting picture of him. This part reminds me of a joke:

"Merchant says he bills for an average of 12.7 hours per day 365 days a year (That’s more than 4,600 hours; a lawyer who bills 2,000 hours annually is considered a top producer at most big firms). "

The joke is that a lawyer is at the pearly gates and St.Peter looks at him to make a decision on whether he would be allowed into heaven. The lawyer is lamenting that he died so young, as he was only 35 years old. St. Peter says "Really? That's funny, according to your billable hours here you must be at least 68!

[ken0042]

Don't forget the old adage Slava- All lawyers are scum. Except for my lawyer; he rocks!

[fredr123]

I have no experience with Class Proceedings but I would point out that the Certification judgment noted by ken is in Saskatchewan. The judgment identifies both a resident and non-resident classes.

With respect to class actions in Alberta, generally, you may want to check out this link from Osler: http://www.osler.com/resources.aspx?id=8641

It would appear that under the Class Proceedings Act in Alberta, as opposed to other provinces, costs are not limited to the representative plaintiffs:

Costs: Parties in an Alberta class proceeding will be subject to pay legal costs and disbursements under the usual, loser-pay rules applicable to most proceedings in Alberta. Here, the Act departs from the recommendations of the Alberta Law Reform Institute. Legislation in Ontario and elsewhere expressly holds representative plaintiffs, but not individual class members, liable for costs of litigating the common issues. The Alberta law is currently silent on this distinction.


The possibility of a large costs award against an individual plaintiff is sometimes argued to be a deterrent to commencing class proceedings. Whether such a disincentive can be neutralized through creative funding techniques, or the use of a non-profit corporation as a representative plaintiff, are questions the Alberta courts will eventually have to answer.

[Bobblehead]

It happens on a lot of bills.
Just take a look at your natural gas bill and see the breakout of all the fixed fees. Airlines are the classic examples. Car dealerships (the good old "delivery charges extra").

Tell me/advertise what the fee is that I can be charged, so when I compare I am comparing apples to apples.

Heck, I wish the prices posted in stores included all the tax. Break out how much tax I paid on the register receipt, but when I'm buying stuff I hate needing to add 6% to find out if I have enough cash on me.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Don't forget the old adage Slava- All lawyers are scum. Except for my lawyer; he rocks!

Yeah, "everyone hates lawyers until they need one".

My dealings with Merchant were on a personal level and I'm not saying anything about his legal prowess or lack thereof!

[urban1]

2000?

2000 is a minimum at a number of firms and often your looking at anywhere from 2200 to 2400+ to qualify for bonuses.

Originally Posted by Slava

"Merchant says he bills for an average of 12.7 hours per day 365 days a year (That’s more than 4,600 hours; a lawyer who bills 2,000 hours annually is considered a top producer at most big firms). "

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by urban1

2000?

2000 is a minimum at a number of firms and often your looking at anywhere from 2200 to 2400+ to qualify for bonuses.

Which is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (not allowing for vacations or stats).

In other words, lawyers are "expected" to work 47+ hours a week.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Ironhorse

Which is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (not allowing for vacations or stats).

In other words, lawyers are "expected" to work 47+ hours a week.

I'm not a lawyer; but my understanding is that you bill for things that are being completed by support staff as well as what you complete. (ie. You could be sitting in a mediation on one file while your support staff completes letters and other tasks on other files.)

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by Ironhorse

Which is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (not allowing for vacations or stats).

In other words, lawyers are "expected" to work 47+ hours a week.

That's not so much. I'm a self-employed, small business owner, and it's a rare week when I work less than 60 hours. There are lots of weeks when I work over 80 hours. Although, some of those hours are spent here, so I'm not going to pretend that I work 60 or 80 hard hours. It's still putting in time and being answerable to job demands though.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by Slava

I'm not a lawyer; but my understanding is that you bill for things that are being completed by support staff as well as what you complete. (ie. You could be sitting in a mediation on one file while your support staff completes letters and other tasks on other files.)

In my practice, my assistants bill for their own time on select few projects. They bill at their own rate (substantially lower than mine) and none of it usually counts towards my budget. At least, that's the case for billing by the hour matters.

It should also be noted that for inexperienced counsel, getting in 8 billable hours a day rarely translates into an 8 hour day. In my own experience, being in the office for 2 hours nets about 1 billable hour. Whether that 1 hour is billed in its entirety (some could be written off) and whether any of the time billed actually gets paid are completely different matters altogether. Experienced lawyers become much more efficient to where the ratio of hours worked and hours billed approaches 1.

[Slava]

^^I stand corrected! I guess that to bill a few thousand hours lawyers work the same amount of time as the rest of us!

[killer_carlson]

There are an awful lot of lawyers on this site. Don't worry about whether you should sign up yet or not, Merchant has offices in Alberta and will undoubtedly be advertising. He'll be tied up with the Residential schools thing for a few weeks though....

[Thor]

Its such an eye opener when I moved from Iceland to Canada in 2001. Back then we already had 3 cell phone companies (country of 300,000) and you never had to sign contracts. You only bought a sim card, and paid for a monthly package with whomever you chose.

This in a socialist country.

You had to buy your cell phone upfront, and eventually they offered contracts with a free phone, BUT you could always drop the company and pay a small fine. But you owned that phone number, you took it along with your business to whatever provider you wanted to sign up with.

Canada's cell phone companies are an utter joke, the rates, the slowness of the upgrades to our systems, etc.. Richard Branson of Virgin even came to Canada to protest this sillyness.

The biggest choke hold a cell phone company has is owning your phone number, and that is simply not fair practice.

Next time the change your provider day comes up that Branson managed to get, I'm gonna finally leave Telus who'm I loathe.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Thor

The biggest choke hold a cell phone company has is owning your phone number, and that is simply not fair practice.

I think you mean "had", not has.

[HOOT]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Looks like there was a court ruling this week in the favour of the consumers, and now a lawyer is organizing a class action.
http://www.merchantlaw.com/cellular.html

I hate seeing the $7 fee every month on my bill. If it's a cost of doing business, then work it into the price. If every business did what cell, airlines, etc do, then our lives would be more complicated. Imagine ordering a pizza, and asking how much the pizza is. You are told $4 and you order it. Then the guy tells you you owe him $20 after fees.

My questions to our resident lawyers; is there any danger in signing up for this? ie- I really don't care if I only get 33% of a judgement back if it means no more of these fees. But I also don't want to submit my name, then be asked for a $500 retainer or anything.

Bell tried doing that but none of the other Telecom companies followed so they had to go back to the old way because people would see Telus/Rogers advertising the same plan for $25(plus fees but didn't advertise that part) when Bell was advertising $30 (with no fees) but people don't do their homework and just assumed Bell was more expensive.

I know Bell has one plan now that is an "ALL IN" price with no connection charge or system access fee or 911 but they don't advertise it. From what I have seen it kills every plan out there...