Litigation

AG Posts 2008 Proposition 65 Settlements

By Bruce Nye

    Each year since 2000, the California Attorney General has posted a summary of Proposition 65 settlements for the previous year, and the report for 2008 is now up.  The trend is up, not for the number of settlements but for their average dollar amounts.

    Last year, private party enforcers (as you call them if you are on the plaintiff side), or bounty hunters  (as you call them if you are on the side of righteousness  defense side) settled a total of 187 cases for penalties, payments in lieu of penalties, attorneys' fees and costs totaling $17,804,104.44.  That's an average settlement of $95,209 per case.  That number is substantially skewed, however, by the result of a single case:  Environmental Law Foundation and Communities for a Better Environment's $6.6 million attorneys' fee settlement from Laidlaw Transit, which also agreed to invest $4.7 million in bus improvements to improve emissions. 

    If you take the Laidlaw settlement out, the average bounty hunter settlement is a trifling $60,237, higher than 2006 and 2007's averages of $43,764 and $59,031, respectively.  On the other hand, if you look at all settlements, including those by the Attorney General and other public enforcers, here are the total amounts recovered and averages for each of the last four years:

    Oh yes, and the amounts going to bounty hunter attorneys' fees and costs from 2000 through 2008?  $59,812.298.57.  That's 66.86% of the cash amount in all the settlements.

    And the amount going to the State of California?  It's a little difficult to determine, but my best stab at calculating it suggests that the maximum amount that could have gone to the State of California from settlements from 2000 through 2008 is $7,602,531.  That would be a thumping 6.6% of all settlements.

Full post as published by CalBizLit on April 10, 2009 (boomark / email).