yeah I started out my first class

section was for that company I mentioned

biomed it was a class action many years

ago about the propriety of using

titanium and hip implants and this is

back when titanium was first being used

I was on the defense side then tried

that won it when I started doing

plaintiff’s work uh judge Burge and I

came up with the idea of

why couldn’t we bring a bad faith case

in a class action setting and so we

tried that succeeded

and have a published opinion from the

Oklahoma Supreme Court on it actually

and judge Burridge has a lot of cases

pending now and has settled a bunch of

them where we represent royalty owners

oil and gas royalty owners who have been

underpaid or overcharged in their

royalty fees

so we’re doing a good a good deal of

class actions now

they’ve been portrayed in the media and

in the press as cases where people just

get nothing and the lawyers get all the

money that’s that’s not accurate at all

we’ve never done a coupon settlement

ever our clients if they are successful

in settling or winning the case they get

real money these are always complex they

always take a long time but the reason

we have class actions this is the reason

there are companies in this country

today that have learned if you will

cheat people a relatively small amount

of money

you can kind of go under the radar and

people won’t fight you because it’s a

relatively small amount of money but

it’s the same kind of systemic cheating

across the board so you’re not just

cheating one person you’re cheating tens

of thousands of people and the goal of

these companies is that nobody will want

to fight City Hall and swim upstream

that hard for a relatively small amount

of money but the companies are overall

they’re cheating tens of millions of

dollars in some cases hundreds of

millions of dollars a class action is

the best remedy because you can try one

person’s case

and that case will dispose of of the

case for all of the people who are

similarly situated it is a device that’s

been Incorporated in the statutes both

at the federal and the state level for a

long time and when it’s used

appropriately It’s a Wonderful tool

there’s no substitute for it and it’s

the only way some people who get cheated

these small amounts of money can ever

recover