Ted Frank
Encyclopedia
Theodore H. Frank is an American
lawyer
, legal writer and blogger, based in Washington, D.C.
. He is the founder and president of the Center for Class Action Fairness
(CCAF), established in 2009. Particularly active in protecting consumers from their own class action lawyers, in product liability, and in civil procedure, the Wall Street Journal has referred to him as "a leading tort-reform
advocate."
Frank graduated from the Brandeis University
in 1991 and the University of Chicago Law School
in 1994 with a Juris Doctor
. A litigator from 1995 to 2005 and former clerk for Frank H. Easterbrook
on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Frank is also a former director and fellow
of the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute
in Washington D.C. As of 2011 he is an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, where he is also editor of the Institute's web magazine, PointofLaw.com. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society
's Litigation Practice Group and contributes regularly to conservative legal weblogs, and as of 2008, he is a member of the American Law Institute
.
Frank has been outspoken on and has written on issues such as product liability
, tobacco litigation, asbestos litigation
, medical malpractice
, pharmaceuticals, and Hurricane Katrina
, among other topics. He has written for several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, as well as law reviews, and has appeared on news networks, including National Public Radio, the BBC
, and Fox News. According to the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, Frank wrote the vetting
report for vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin
for the John McCain
campaign
in the 2008 presidential election
.
and a cousin of Washington Post reporter Garance Franke-Ruta
.
He graduated from the Benjamin Franklin High School
in New Orleans, then earned his Bachelor of Arts
degree in Economics from Brandeis University
in May 1991. He wrote columns for his campus newspaper and political magazines and was a member of the student senate. He objected to a campaign to stop serving pork at the Jewish university, which was noted in The New York Times
. He said, "The general feeling is that we're not forcing them to eat pork and they shouldn't be forcing us not to eat pork."
In 1994 Frank earned his Juris Doctor
with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School
. At Chicago he earned Order of the Coif
and served on the law review
. While at Chicago Law, he was a known presence on Usenet
groups and researched urban legends; he was an early contributor to the Baseball Prospectus
collective through essays on the Usenet group rec.sport.baseball. He has also been described as one of the most notorious contributors along with snopes to an activity then known as "trolling for newbies" (the term "trolling" was not negative in connotation).
After clerking
for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook
of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
, Frank entered private practice between 1995 and 2005 as a litigator on class action
tort
cases at law firm
s Kirkland & Ellis
, Irell & Manella
, and O’Melveny & Myers. Among his earliest cases were two sudden acceleration cases, where he represented the automakers. As part of his practice, Frank defended a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) to delay the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, defended Vioxx liability cases, and served on defense teams for antitrust and patent cases.
as a fellow in 2005, and as the director of the Legal Center for the Public Interest he spoke and wrote about civil justice issues and securities law and legal liability. The AEI offered him a fellowship to research the effects of the Class Action Fairness Act. Frank also sits on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society
's Litigation Practice Group.
Frank is a leading proponent for tort reform in the United States. According to Frank, he became disillusioned at class action tactics, and the willingness of judges to approve settlements he felt were poor for consumers. He has strongly criticized obesity lawsuits, calling them "rent-seeking
vehicles that are neither good law nor good public policy."
In April 2008, several members of Congress brought up the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
under Title VII, a revision of law "to state that prior acts outside the 180 day statute of limitations could be included", affecting employment financial issues. Frank was against the revision. He said, "To the extent every employee is a potential lawsuit, that is a cost of hiring an employee. As those costs go up, employers will hire fewer employees, and charge "insurance" to the employees they do hire by reducing their wages to account for the possibility of a future lawsuit. If the misnamed "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" passes, the vast majority of workers will be worse off, as money that would have gone to pay employees will instead go to pay attorneys." The law was eventually passed in January 2009.
Also in 2008, Frank objected to the Hot Coffee class action settlement over the "hidden sex scenes" in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
, in part on the grounds that the settlement sought $1 million for attorneys' fees while paying the class members less than $27,000. The New York Times quoted him as saying that it was possible that the plaintiff's class action attorneys were "selling out the class for attorneys’ fees." According to Kotaku
, the settlement was denied by the court.
In February 2011, Frank was part of a three-member panel at Vanderbilt University
in Tennessee
which consisted of himself, James Blumstein
, who is a law professor at the university, and Charlie Ross, a former State Senator in Mississippi
, presenting their perspectives on how the business and people of the state would benefit from tort reform. Frank and the other panelists argued that "Tennessee’s current civil justice system is both inconsistent and unsustainable" and it was argued that, based on reforms in other states, a reform in this area could result in 30,000 jobs a year or 577 jobs each week in Tennessee and significantly improve the health system.
, Jon Haber
, who believes that his views on tort reform are an "attack on the Constitution of the United States". Haber said about Frank, "While defending large corporations should be expected, his suggestion that consumers would benefit by limiting their access to the nation's courts is too preposterous to let go unchallenged. The claim that the civil justice system is overrun by lawsuits that may transform the nation into a "banana republic", as Frank implies without irony or facts, is just plain laughable". Frank defended himself on the PointofLaw.com weblog which he regularly contributes, maintained by Olson and sponsored by the Manhattan Institute
, "I presume Haber doesn't support the silliest of the lawsuits I suggested, so the question isn't whether the right should be limited (since we would agree that it should), but under what circumstances it should be limited. I suggest that consumers who have suffered no injury not be permitted to sue under "consumer fraud" statutes. Haber has no response to this. At no point does Haber specifically defend the lawsuits I actually criticize."
Haber was critical of Frank's criticism of victims of Hurricane Katrina
for pressuring insurance companies to pay what they feel is owed under their homeowners policy. Frank responded by saying, "Almost every home-owners insurance policy in the United States has a clause excluding coverage for flood damage. (A government-subsidized flood insurance program makes it uneconomic for private insurance companies to include flood insurance in homeowners' policies. Insurers thus only offer the government policy.) Every insurance holder in America benefits from these exclusions by being able to receive affordable insurance for non-flood risks, because the price of the policy reflects the level of risk incurred by the insurer. Nevertheless, trial lawyers egged on by Mississippi's state attorney general, Jim Hood
seek to retroactively rewrite the policies by suing insurers to force them to pay money for a risk they did not agree to assume."
Haber was also critical on Frank's views on the long drawn-out Vioxx case. He said, "Frank defends Merck
, his former client, which sold an anti-inflammation drug called Vioxx, all while hiding from doctors the fact that the drug was unsafe. Even though one FDA official said Vioxx led to as many as 55,000 deaths, Frank wants to limit the right of Americans to hold liable wrong-doers like Merck." Frank initially defended himself on the PointofLaw.com weblog and claimed that the "55,000" number was completely invented, and that Merck never hid anything from doctors that it knew itself. In an August 2011 article published in the The Washington Examiner, he further summed up his reasons for defending Merck. "A final sordid chapter in the tort litigation over Vioxx closed, as Judge Eldon Fallon divvied up $315 million to be paid to the plaintiffs' attorneys who worked on the litigation. This sum was in addition to the more than $1.2 billion already paid to such attorneys. When you add in what Merck paid to plaintiffs and for its own attorneys, the Vioxx litigation cost it more than $7 billion. Yet Merck almost certainly did not do anything wrong. Even as an unsympathetic corporate defendant, it won the vast majority of cases that went to trial, and another dozen or more that plaintiffs' attorneys dismissed on the eve of trial rather than risk the publicity of a certain loss. Even in the handful of cases that Merck lost at trial, such as the $253 million verdict in the Ernst case that generated much of the publicity that led to tens of thousands of cases being filed, Merck won reversals of most of those on appeal because the verdicts were based on conclusory junk-science expert testimony that should not have been admitted into evidence."
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2007, Frank said that the Department of Treasury
and SEC
should urge the Supreme Court to reject expanded securities litigation
liability in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta. Congressmen John Conyers, Jr. and Barney Frank
criticized this op-ed in their saying that Frank's argument substituted policy considerations for the plain text of statute. Frank rebutted the allegation on the Overlawyered weblog. Also in 2007, Frank posted an article regarding tort trial lawyer Arthur Alan Wolk
on Overlawyered, a website he has regularly posted on since 2003 about tort reform issues, that prompted Wolk to sue Frank for defamation. The case was dismissed as barred by the one year statute of limitations. On appeal, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
, the Society of Professional Journalists
, the American Society of News Editors
, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press
, and law professors and First Amendment experts Eugene Volokh
and Glenn Reynolds
, among others, filed amicus
briefs in support of the defendants saying that there was no actionable claim of libel.
Frank has also been outspoken on several unrelated issues. In August 2007 he criticized Michael Moore
, and dismissed his documentary film Sicko
as "misleading numerical gloss." He is also critical of Wikipedia
and has written, "Wikipedia in general suffers from a severe bias; articles about controversial topics reward persistence over accuracy."
(CCAF) to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class action
s and class action settlements. According to The American Lawyer, as of March 2011, the CCAF had filed objections to 17 settlements, with eight objections pending in federal district courts, and had been successful on six of them.
Frank, at his own expense, traveled to New York and filed a successful objection to the proposed class action settlement in the Grand Theft Auto consumer fraud case where class members who had bought a “Grand Theft Auto” computer game with a hidden, sexually explicit easter egg
would have received less than $30,000, while the plaintiffs' attorneys would receive $1 million in legal fees. Spurred by complaints about excessive sexual content in the game, class action attorneys sued its makers, Take Two Interactive Software. Although the software giant had received only $27,000 in claims from irate consumers, it agreed to a settlement in which the plaintiffs’ lawyers themselves would collect $1 million. Frank's case succeeded and the settlement was halted.
CCAF has objected to settlements throughout the United States, in cases where class action lawyers receive cash payments but the plaintiff class receives only discount coupons for further products and services from the defendant company. CCAF argues in those cases that few of the coupons are ever used, so the actual payment to plaintiffs is much lower than the stated amounts. In 2010, CCAF successfully objected to a coupon settlement
in a Central District of California class action alleging consumer fraud in the sale of Honda Civic Hybrid
s; the settlement would have provided $2.95 million in attorneys' fees, but only coupons to the class. Frank was reported to have said, "coupons are nearly worthless because so few of the intended beneficiaries will find it worthwhile to fill in all the necessary paperwork." The CCAF has also been involved in the case surrounding the allegations of email spamming
by Ameritrade in 2009. The case brought Frank before Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, where he challenged the fairness of a TD Ameritrade settlement, which consists of coupons for antivirus software. Frank "argued that the court should not award, or should at least limit, the requested $1.87 million in attorney fees." Judge Walker rejected the Ameritrade settlement in October 2009.
In 2010, Frank and the CCAF, citing American Law Institute
guidelines on cy-près, objected to Apple's settlement of a securities class action over their backdating, arguing that giving money to third parties affiliated with the class counsel instead of to the class was a breach of fiduciary duty. Frank stated that, "The magnitude of the settlement compared to the original claims demonstrates that it is an extortionate nuisance settlement, being made because it would cost more to defend the suit than to pay the attorneys to go away." In response to CCAF's objection, the parties amended the settlement by reallocating the $2.5 million originally proposed as cy-près to class members; the court awarded CCAF attorneys' fees for their role in winning $2.5 million for the class.
In April 2011, Frank and the CCAF filed an objection to the $3.4 billion taxpayer funded Cobell Indian Trust settlement, which the federal government had agreed to in December 2009, which had established a $1.5 billion Trust Accounting and Administration Fund and a $1.9 billion Trust Land Consolidation Fund to buy fractionated land interests. Under the agreed settlement, a maximum of $99.9 million had been allocated for the lawyers fees but they had demanded $223 million. Acting on behalf of Kimberly Craven, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Ovate tribe member, Frank argued that the case was about pure greed, stating that it included "an ‘outrageous’ fee request that has resulted in bipartisan criticism" and that the Class Counsel were "more interested in maximizing their personal recovery than the interests of the class."
In May 2011, the Center for Class Action Fairness filed a lengthy brief in Missouri
, challenging a settlement which gave lawyers who sued A.G. Edwards
$21 million in fees for negotiating an agreement that provided a total of $6 million for some customers and three annual coupons valued at $8.22 apiece for the rest. St. Louis
Judge Angela T. Quigless
of the Missouri Court of Appeals
rejected the case, ruling that, “In cases involving complex litigation or in the class action context, a one-third contingent fee award is not unreasonable.”
In August 2011, the CCAF successfully won a case at a federal appeals court in California in which they objected to class action settlements and attorneys' fees in litigation regarding Bluetooth
headsets. The original case over the headsets had been filed when lawyers had noticed news articles about potential hearing loss and headsets and filed suits on behalf of millions of Motorola
and Plantronics
customers. The prior settlement would have effectively paid consumers nothing but given the lawyers who negotiated the pact $850,000 in fees, amended by Frank and his firm. Frank regards the case as a milestone in his fight to prevent abuses. Frank also filed an objection to a settlement in an antitrust case against Sirius XM Radio, which provided nothing for the plaintiffs, but a 100 percent payout of $13 million for the attorneys. Judge Harold Baer, Jr.
ruled on 24 August that the settlement terms "demonstrate sufficient fairness, adequacy and reasonableness" and rejected Frank's claims. Frank vowed to appeal, saying, "You don't like to lose, but it's a good case to take to the appellate court."
, he began contributing regularly to Overlawyered
, a legal weblog that advocates tort reform.
His work is found in law reviews, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The American
, and National Review
Online. As head of AEI's Liability Project his opinions and analysis of liability litigation have been quoted in the New York Times, BusinessWeek
, The Washington Examiner, and the New York Law Journal
. Areas of interest and expertise include product liability
, asbestos litigation
, medical malpractice
, and pharmaceuticals such as Vioxx and he has been outspoken on health issues.
Frank has written articles in several books and journals, including work in the books by the American Bar Association
, 2002 Annual Review of Antitrust Developments (2003) and Market Power Handbook: Competition Law and Economic Foundations (2005). Articles written for journals include "The Economic Interest Test and Collective Action Problems in Antitrust Tie-in Cases", written whilst at the University of Chicago (1994), "A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation" (2006), "West Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Learned Intermediary Rule" with James M. Beck
(October 2007), and "Did the Right Make America a Lawsuit Nation?" in Thomas Geoghegan’s See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation, (2008).
According to the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, on the weekend before John McCain
made his vice-presidential pick, McCain's advisor Arthur Culvahouse asked Ted Frank to prepare a written report on Sarah Palin
, "Thrown together from scratch in less than forty hours, the document highlighted her vulnerabilities: "Democrats upset at McCain's anti-Obama 'celebrity' advertisements will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue
in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News
expressed concern that she often seemed 'unprepared or over her head' in a campaign run by a friend." " The book also says that Frank worked on the vetting of Senator Joe Lieberman
.
Frank is regularly invited to speak on class action issues and related cases in venues such as the Washington Legal Foundation
, the Federalist Society of Washington, D.C. and Houston, Vanderbilt University, the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, the American Constitution Society and at the federal societies of University of Chicago Law School
, Florida State University College of Law
, George Washington University Law School, Stetson University Law School
, and the University of Miami Law School. Between December 5–7, 2010, Frank was invited to speak at the 5th Annual Judicial Symposium on Civil Justice Issues. He has appeared on ABC News Now
, Good Morning America
on ABC
, The World on BBC4, Your World with Neil Cavuto
on Fox News, RNN-TV News, the Politics and Money programme of Bloomberg TV and has made five appearances on C-SPAN
with the AEI.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, legal writer and blogger, based in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. He is the founder and president of the Center for Class Action Fairness
Center for Class Action Fairness
The Center for Class Action Fairness is a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law firm, founded by Ted Frank in June 2009 to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements...
(CCAF), established in 2009. Particularly active in protecting consumers from their own class action lawyers, in product liability, and in civil procedure, the Wall Street Journal has referred to him as "a leading tort-reform
Tort reform
Tort reform refers to proposed changes in common law civil justice systems that would reduce tort litigation or damages. Tort actions are civil common law claims first created in the English commonwealth system as a non-legislative means for compensating wrongs and harm done by one party to...
advocate."
Frank graduated from the Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in 1991 and the University of Chicago Law School
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...
in 1994 with a Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
. A litigator from 1995 to 2005 and former clerk for Frank H. Easterbrook
Frank H. Easterbrook
Frank Hoover Easterbrook is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He has been Chief Judge since November 2006, and has been a judge on the court since 1985...
on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Frank is also a former director and fellow
Research fellow
The title of research fellow is used to denote a research position at a university or similar institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a principal investigator...
of the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
in Washington D.C. As of 2011 he is an adjunct fellow at Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, where he is also editor of the Institute's web magazine, PointofLaw.com. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society
Federalist Society
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, most frequently called simply the Federalist Society, is an organization of conservatives seeking reform of the current American legal system in accordance with a textualist and/or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution...
's Litigation Practice Group and contributes regularly to conservative legal weblogs, and as of 2008, he is a member of the American Law Institute
American Law Institute
The American Law Institute was established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of American common law and its adaptation to changing social needs. The ALI drafts, approves, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, model codes, and other proposals for law...
.
Frank has been outspoken on and has written on issues such as product liability
Product liability
Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause...
, tobacco litigation, asbestos litigation
Asbestos and the law
This article concerns asbestos-related legal and regulatory issues. Litigation related to asbestos injuries and property damages has been claimed to be the longest-running mass tort in U.S. history...
, medical malpractice
Medical malpractice
Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error. Standards and...
, pharmaceuticals, and Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
, among other topics. He has written for several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, as well as law reviews, and has appeared on news networks, including National Public Radio, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, and Fox News. According to the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, Frank wrote the vetting
Vetting
Vetting is a process of examination and evaluation, generally referring to performing a background check on someone before offering him or her employment, conferring an award, etc...
report for vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
for the John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
campaign
John McCain presidential campaign, 2008
John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona, launched his second candidacy for the presidency of the United States in an unsuccessful bid to win the 2008 presidential election. His candidacy, in the works for a number of years, was informally announced on February 28, 2007 during a...
in the 2008 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
.
Background and early career
Frank was born in 1968. He is the nephew of Johanna HurwitzJohanna Hurwitz
Johanna Hurwitz is an award-winning author of more than sixty children's books. She has sold millions of books in many different languages....
and a cousin of Washington Post reporter Garance Franke-Ruta
Garance Franke-Ruta
Garance Franke-Ruta is the politics editor of The Atlantic Online. Previously she was a national web politics editor for the Washington Post and a blogger for its WhoRunsGov site, a senior editor at the American Prospect and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, D.C.'s alternative weekly...
.
He graduated from the Benjamin Franklin High School
Benjamin Franklin High School (New Orleans, Louisiana)
Benjamin Franklin High School is a public magnet high school in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Commonly nicknamed "Franklin" or "Ben Franklin", this school should not be confused with Franklin High School in Franklin, Louisiana. Ben Franklin was founded in 1957 as a school for gifted children...
in New Orleans, then earned his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree in Economics from Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in May 1991. He wrote columns for his campus newspaper and political magazines and was a member of the student senate. He objected to a campaign to stop serving pork at the Jewish university, which was noted in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. He said, "The general feeling is that we're not forcing them to eat pork and they shouldn't be forcing us not to eat pork."
In 1994 Frank earned his Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...
. At Chicago he earned Order of the Coif
Order of the Coif
The Order of the Coif is an honor society for United States law school graduates. A student at an American law school who earns a Juris Doctor degree and graduates in the top 10 percent of his or her class is eligible for membership if the student's law school has a chapter of the...
and served on the law review
University of Chicago Law Review
The University of Chicago Law Review is a law journal published by the University of Chicago Law School, and was established in 1933. From 1942 through 1945 the review was published by the faculty, due to World War II. Prominent former student members have included Judge Abner J...
. While at Chicago Law, he was a known presence on Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
groups and researched urban legends; he was an early contributor to the Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Prospectus is an organization that publishes a website, BaseballProspectus.com, devoted to the sabermetric analysis of baseball. BP has a staff of regular columnists and provides advanced statistics as well player and team performance projections on the site...
collective through essays on the Usenet group rec.sport.baseball. He has also been described as one of the most notorious contributors along with snopes to an activity then known as "trolling for newbies" (the term "trolling" was not negative in connotation).
After clerking
Law clerk
A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court. Most law clerks are recent law school graduates who...
for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook
Frank H. Easterbrook
Frank Hoover Easterbrook is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He has been Chief Judge since November 2006, and has been a judge on the court since 1985...
of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts:* Central District of Illinois* Northern District of Illinois...
, Frank entered private practice between 1995 and 2005 as a litigator on class action
Class action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
tort
Tort
A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general...
cases at law firm
Law firm
A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...
s Kirkland & Ellis
Kirkland & Ellis
Kirkland & Ellis LLP is an international law firm with headquarters in Chicago, known for its profitability and its litigation, bankruptcy, intellectual property and private equity departments. Kirkland & Ellis is currently ranked as the ninth most prestigious law firm in the United States by...
, Irell & Manella
Irell & Manella
Irell & Manella LLP was founded in 1941 by lawyers Lawrence E. Irell and Arthur Manella , and has grown to 220 lawyers. It currently has two locations in Southern California: Century City and Newport Beach. Irell is well known for both intellectual property litigation and general business...
, and O’Melveny & Myers. Among his earliest cases were two sudden acceleration cases, where he represented the automakers. As part of his practice, Frank defended a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
(ACLU) to delay the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, defended Vioxx liability cases, and served on defense teams for antitrust and patent cases.
Advocacy of tort reform
Frank joined the American Enterprise InstituteAmerican Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
as a fellow in 2005, and as the director of the Legal Center for the Public Interest he spoke and wrote about civil justice issues and securities law and legal liability. The AEI offered him a fellowship to research the effects of the Class Action Fairness Act. Frank also sits on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society
Federalist Society
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, most frequently called simply the Federalist Society, is an organization of conservatives seeking reform of the current American legal system in accordance with a textualist and/or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution...
's Litigation Practice Group.
Frank is a leading proponent for tort reform in the United States. According to Frank, he became disillusioned at class action tactics, and the willingness of judges to approve settlements he felt were poor for consumers. He has strongly criticized obesity lawsuits, calling them "rent-seeking
Rent seeking
In economics, rent-seeking is an attempt to derive economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by adding value...
vehicles that are neither good law nor good public policy."
In April 2008, several members of Congress brought up the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is an Act of Congress enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 29, 2009....
under Title VII, a revision of law "to state that prior acts outside the 180 day statute of limitations could be included", affecting employment financial issues. Frank was against the revision. He said, "To the extent every employee is a potential lawsuit, that is a cost of hiring an employee. As those costs go up, employers will hire fewer employees, and charge "insurance" to the employees they do hire by reducing their wages to account for the possibility of a future lawsuit. If the misnamed "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" passes, the vast majority of workers will be worse off, as money that would have gone to pay employees will instead go to pay attorneys." The law was eventually passed in January 2009.
Also in 2008, Frank objected to the Hot Coffee class action settlement over the "hidden sex scenes" in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 open world action video game developed by British games developer Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, the fifth original console release and eighth game overall...
, in part on the grounds that the settlement sought $1 million for attorneys' fees while paying the class members less than $27,000. The New York Times quoted him as saying that it was possible that the plaintiff's class action attorneys were "selling out the class for attorneys’ fees." According to Kotaku
Kotaku
Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...
, the settlement was denied by the court.
In February 2011, Frank was part of a three-member panel at Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
in Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
which consisted of himself, James Blumstein
James Blumstein
Professor James F. Blumstein is an American legal and health scholar. He is currently one of eleven professors at Vanderbilt University and is cited by the university as "among the nation’s most prominent scholars of health law, law and medicine, and voting rights." He has worked at the law...
, who is a law professor at the university, and Charlie Ross, a former State Senator in Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, presenting their perspectives on how the business and people of the state would benefit from tort reform. Frank and the other panelists argued that "Tennessee’s current civil justice system is both inconsistent and unsustainable" and it was argued that, based on reforms in other states, a reform in this area could result in 30,000 jobs a year or 577 jobs each week in Tennessee and significantly improve the health system.
Issues and conflicts
Frank's outlook on reform has drawn criticism from the CEO of the Association of Trial Lawyers of AmericaAssociation of Trial Lawyers of America
The American Association for Justice , formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is the leading organization for lawyers representing plaintiffs in the United States...
, Jon Haber
Jon Haber
Jon Haber is an American writer and political activist who has written internationally on the subject of divest-from-Israel campaigns and their impact on civil institutions such as municipalities, religious institutions and schools....
, who believes that his views on tort reform are an "attack on the Constitution of the United States". Haber said about Frank, "While defending large corporations should be expected, his suggestion that consumers would benefit by limiting their access to the nation's courts is too preposterous to let go unchallenged. The claim that the civil justice system is overrun by lawsuits that may transform the nation into a "banana republic", as Frank implies without irony or facts, is just plain laughable". Frank defended himself on the PointofLaw.com weblog which he regularly contributes, maintained by Olson and sponsored by the Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...
, "I presume Haber doesn't support the silliest of the lawsuits I suggested, so the question isn't whether the right should be limited (since we would agree that it should), but under what circumstances it should be limited. I suggest that consumers who have suffered no injury not be permitted to sue under "consumer fraud" statutes. Haber has no response to this. At no point does Haber specifically defend the lawsuits I actually criticize."
Haber was critical of Frank's criticism of victims of Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
for pressuring insurance companies to pay what they feel is owed under their homeowners policy. Frank responded by saying, "Almost every home-owners insurance policy in the United States has a clause excluding coverage for flood damage. (A government-subsidized flood insurance program makes it uneconomic for private insurance companies to include flood insurance in homeowners' policies. Insurers thus only offer the government policy.) Every insurance holder in America benefits from these exclusions by being able to receive affordable insurance for non-flood risks, because the price of the policy reflects the level of risk incurred by the insurer. Nevertheless, trial lawyers egged on by Mississippi's state attorney general, Jim Hood
Jim Hood
James Matthew "Jim" Hood is the Attorney General of the U.S. state of Mississippi. A Democrat, he was elected in 2003, having defeated the Republican nominee Scott Newton. A former District Attorney, Hood succeeded Mike Moore....
seek to retroactively rewrite the policies by suing insurers to force them to pay money for a risk they did not agree to assume."
Haber was also critical on Frank's views on the long drawn-out Vioxx case. He said, "Frank defends Merck
Merck
Merck may refer to:* Merck KGaA, , a German-based chemical and pharmaceutical company.** Merck Serono , the pharmaceutical division of Merck KGaA...
, his former client, which sold an anti-inflammation drug called Vioxx, all while hiding from doctors the fact that the drug was unsafe. Even though one FDA official said Vioxx led to as many as 55,000 deaths, Frank wants to limit the right of Americans to hold liable wrong-doers like Merck." Frank initially defended himself on the PointofLaw.com weblog and claimed that the "55,000" number was completely invented, and that Merck never hid anything from doctors that it knew itself. In an August 2011 article published in the The Washington Examiner, he further summed up his reasons for defending Merck. "A final sordid chapter in the tort litigation over Vioxx closed, as Judge Eldon Fallon divvied up $315 million to be paid to the plaintiffs' attorneys who worked on the litigation. This sum was in addition to the more than $1.2 billion already paid to such attorneys. When you add in what Merck paid to plaintiffs and for its own attorneys, the Vioxx litigation cost it more than $7 billion. Yet Merck almost certainly did not do anything wrong. Even as an unsympathetic corporate defendant, it won the vast majority of cases that went to trial, and another dozen or more that plaintiffs' attorneys dismissed on the eve of trial rather than risk the publicity of a certain loss. Even in the handful of cases that Merck lost at trial, such as the $253 million verdict in the Ernst case that generated much of the publicity that led to tens of thousands of cases being filed, Merck won reversals of most of those on appeal because the verdicts were based on conclusory junk-science expert testimony that should not have been admitted into evidence."
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2007, Frank said that the Department of Treasury
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...
and SEC
United States Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is a federal agency which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States...
should urge the Supreme Court to reject expanded securities litigation
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
The United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Pub. L. 104-67, 109 Stat. 737 implemented several substantive changes affecting certain cases brought under the federal securities laws, including changes related to pleading, discovery, liability, class representation, and...
liability in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta. Congressmen John Conyers, Jr. and Barney Frank
Barney Frank
Barney Frank is the U.S. Representative for . A member of the Democratic Party, he is the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States.Born and raised in New Jersey, Frank graduated from Harvard College and...
criticized this op-ed in their saying that Frank's argument substituted policy considerations for the plain text of statute. Frank rebutted the allegation on the Overlawyered weblog. Also in 2007, Frank posted an article regarding tort trial lawyer Arthur Alan Wolk
Arthur Alan Wolk
Arthur Alan Wolk is an attorney, author and the founding partner of The Wolk Law Firm in Philadelphia, PA, which specializes in aviation law and air crash litigation for plaintiffs....
on Overlawyered, a website he has regularly posted on since 2003 about tort reform issues, that prompted Wolk to sue Frank for defamation. The case was dismissed as barred by the one year statute of limitations. On appeal, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is an American nonprofit organization, founded in 1970, that provides free legal assistance to and on behalf of journalists. A number of prominent journalists presently sit on the organization's steering committee, including Dan Rather, and Judy...
, the Society of Professional Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...
, the American Society of News Editors
American Society of News Editors
The American Society of News Editors is a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of media-related foundations and training organizations...
, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, and law professors and First Amendment experts Eugene Volokh
Eugene Volokh
Eugene Volokh is an American legal commentator and the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law...
and Glenn Reynolds
Glenn Reynolds
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, and is best known for his weblog, Instapundit, one of the most widely read American political weblogs...
, among others, filed amicus
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
briefs in support of the defendants saying that there was no actionable claim of libel.
Frank has also been outspoken on several unrelated issues. In August 2007 he criticized Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
, and dismissed his documentary film Sicko
Sicko
Sicko is a 2007 documentary film by American filmmaker Michael Moore. The film investigates health care in the United States, focusing on its health insurance and the pharmaceutical industry. The movie compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S...
as "misleading numerical gloss." He is also critical of Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and has written, "Wikipedia in general suffers from a severe bias; articles about controversial topics reward persistence over accuracy."
Center for Class Action Fairness
In 2009, Frank founded the public-interest non-profit law firm Center for Class Action FairnessCenter for Class Action Fairness
The Center for Class Action Fairness is a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law firm, founded by Ted Frank in June 2009 to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class actions and class action settlements...
(CCAF) to represent consumers dissatisfied with their counsel in class action
Class action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
s and class action settlements. According to The American Lawyer, as of March 2011, the CCAF had filed objections to 17 settlements, with eight objections pending in federal district courts, and had been successful on six of them.
Frank, at his own expense, traveled to New York and filed a successful objection to the proposed class action settlement in the Grand Theft Auto consumer fraud case where class members who had bought a “Grand Theft Auto” computer game with a hidden, sexually explicit easter egg
Easter egg (media)
Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...
would have received less than $30,000, while the plaintiffs' attorneys would receive $1 million in legal fees. Spurred by complaints about excessive sexual content in the game, class action attorneys sued its makers, Take Two Interactive Software. Although the software giant had received only $27,000 in claims from irate consumers, it agreed to a settlement in which the plaintiffs’ lawyers themselves would collect $1 million. Frank's case succeeded and the settlement was halted.
CCAF has objected to settlements throughout the United States, in cases where class action lawyers receive cash payments but the plaintiff class receives only discount coupons for further products and services from the defendant company. CCAF argues in those cases that few of the coupons are ever used, so the actual payment to plaintiffs is much lower than the stated amounts. In 2010, CCAF successfully objected to a coupon settlement
Coupon settlement
In law, a coupon settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a class action legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. In a coupon settlement, class members receive coupons or other promises for products or services instead of a cash award...
in a Central District of California class action alleging consumer fraud in the sale of Honda Civic Hybrid
Honda Civic Hybrid
The Civic hybrid, based on the seventh generation Civic, was first introduced to the Japanese market in December 2001. Honda claimed it was the most fuel efficient 5-passenger gasoline-powered production vehicle in the world at the time. It was introduced to the U.S. in spring 2002 as a 2003 model...
s; the settlement would have provided $2.95 million in attorneys' fees, but only coupons to the class. Frank was reported to have said, "coupons are nearly worthless because so few of the intended beneficiaries will find it worthwhile to fill in all the necessary paperwork." The CCAF has also been involved in the case surrounding the allegations of email spamming
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
by Ameritrade in 2009. The case brought Frank before Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, where he challenged the fairness of a TD Ameritrade settlement, which consists of coupons for antivirus software. Frank "argued that the court should not award, or should at least limit, the requested $1.87 million in attorney fees." Judge Walker rejected the Ameritrade settlement in October 2009.
In 2010, Frank and the CCAF, citing American Law Institute
American Law Institute
The American Law Institute was established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of American common law and its adaptation to changing social needs. The ALI drafts, approves, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, model codes, and other proposals for law...
guidelines on cy-près, objected to Apple's settlement of a securities class action over their backdating, arguing that giving money to third parties affiliated with the class counsel instead of to the class was a breach of fiduciary duty. Frank stated that, "The magnitude of the settlement compared to the original claims demonstrates that it is an extortionate nuisance settlement, being made because it would cost more to defend the suit than to pay the attorneys to go away." In response to CCAF's objection, the parties amended the settlement by reallocating the $2.5 million originally proposed as cy-près to class members; the court awarded CCAF attorneys' fees for their role in winning $2.5 million for the class.
In April 2011, Frank and the CCAF filed an objection to the $3.4 billion taxpayer funded Cobell Indian Trust settlement, which the federal government had agreed to in December 2009, which had established a $1.5 billion Trust Accounting and Administration Fund and a $1.9 billion Trust Land Consolidation Fund to buy fractionated land interests. Under the agreed settlement, a maximum of $99.9 million had been allocated for the lawyers fees but they had demanded $223 million. Acting on behalf of Kimberly Craven, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Ovate tribe member, Frank argued that the case was about pure greed, stating that it included "an ‘outrageous’ fee request that has resulted in bipartisan criticism" and that the Class Counsel were "more interested in maximizing their personal recovery than the interests of the class."
In May 2011, the Center for Class Action Fairness filed a lengthy brief in Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, challenging a settlement which gave lawyers who sued A.G. Edwards
A.G. Edwards
A.G. Edwards, Inc. was an American financial services holding company; its principal wholly owned subsidiary was A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., which operated as a full-service securities broker-dealer in the United States and Europe. The firm was acquired by Wachovia Securities, which later was...
$21 million in fees for negotiating an agreement that provided a total of $6 million for some customers and three annual coupons valued at $8.22 apiece for the rest. St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
Judge Angela T. Quigless
Angela T. Quigless
Angela Turner Quigless is an American judge. She was appointed by Governor Bob Holden as the Circuit Judge for the 22nd Judicial Circuit of the City of St. Louis, Missouri on Friday January 3, 2003, previously serving as an Associate Circuit Judge from February 28, 1995. She judges in the...
of the Missouri Court of Appeals
Missouri Court of Appeals
The Missouri Court of Appeals is the intermediate appellate court for the state of Missouri. The court handles most of the appeals from the Missouri Circuit Courts. The court is divided into three districts: Eastern The Missouri Court of Appeals is the intermediate appellate court for the state...
rejected the case, ruling that, “In cases involving complex litigation or in the class action context, a one-third contingent fee award is not unreasonable.”
In August 2011, the CCAF successfully won a case at a federal appeals court in California in which they objected to class action settlements and attorneys' fees in litigation regarding Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
headsets. The original case over the headsets had been filed when lawyers had noticed news articles about potential hearing loss and headsets and filed suits on behalf of millions of Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
and Plantronics
Plantronics
Plantronics is an electronics company producing audio communications equipment for business and consumers. Its' products provide unified communications, mobile use, gaming and music...
customers. The prior settlement would have effectively paid consumers nothing but given the lawyers who negotiated the pact $850,000 in fees, amended by Frank and his firm. Frank regards the case as a milestone in his fight to prevent abuses. Frank also filed an objection to a settlement in an antitrust case against Sirius XM Radio, which provided nothing for the plaintiffs, but a 100 percent payout of $13 million for the attorneys. Judge Harold Baer, Jr.
Harold Baer, Jr.
Harold Baer, Jr. is a Federal District Judge in the Southern District of New York. He received his BA from Hobart College in 1954, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his LLB from Yale Law School in 1957....
ruled on 24 August that the settlement terms "demonstrate sufficient fairness, adequacy and reasonableness" and rejected Frank's claims. Frank vowed to appeal, saying, "You don't like to lose, but it's a good case to take to the appellate court."
Writing and public appearances
In 2003, together with Walter OlsonWalter Olson
Walter K. Olson is an author and blogger who writes mostly about tort reform. Olson is a senior fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington DC. Formerly Olson was associated with the Manhattan Institute in New York City...
, he began contributing regularly to Overlawyered
Overlawyered
Overlawyered is a law blog on the subject of tort reform run by author Walter Olson. Founded in 1999, it is "widely considered to be the oldest legal blog and is also one of the most popular", according to Law.com....
, a legal weblog that advocates tort reform.
His work is found in law reviews, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The American
The American (magazine)
The American is an online magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. The magazine's primary focus is the intersection of economics and politics...
, and National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
Online. As head of AEI's Liability Project his opinions and analysis of liability litigation have been quoted in the New York Times, BusinessWeek
BusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
, The Washington Examiner, and the New York Law Journal
New York Law Journal
The New York Law Journal, founded in 1888, is a legal periodical covering the legal profession in New York, United States. The newspaper covers legal news, decisions, court calendars, and legislation, and provides analysis and insight in columns written by leading professionals...
. Areas of interest and expertise include product liability
Product liability
Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause...
, asbestos litigation
Asbestos and the law
This article concerns asbestos-related legal and regulatory issues. Litigation related to asbestos injuries and property damages has been claimed to be the longest-running mass tort in U.S. history...
, medical malpractice
Medical malpractice
Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error. Standards and...
, and pharmaceuticals such as Vioxx and he has been outspoken on health issues.
Frank has written articles in several books and journals, including work in the books by the American Bar Association
American Bar Association
The American Bar Association , founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation...
, 2002 Annual Review of Antitrust Developments (2003) and Market Power Handbook: Competition Law and Economic Foundations (2005). Articles written for journals include "The Economic Interest Test and Collective Action Problems in Antitrust Tie-in Cases", written whilst at the University of Chicago (1994), "A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation" (2006), "West Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Learned Intermediary Rule" with James M. Beck
James M. Beck
James Montgomery Beck was an American lawyer and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Republican Party, who served as U.S. Solicitor General and U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania....
(October 2007), and "Did the Right Make America a Lawsuit Nation?" in Thomas Geoghegan’s See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation, (2008).
According to the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, on the weekend before John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
made his vice-presidential pick, McCain's advisor Arthur Culvahouse asked Ted Frank to prepare a written report on Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
, "Thrown together from scratch in less than forty hours, the document highlighted her vulnerabilities: "Democrats upset at McCain's anti-Obama 'celebrity' advertisements will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News
Anchorage Daily News
The Anchorage Daily News is a daily newspaper based in Anchorage, Alaska, in the United States. It is often referred to colloquially as either "the Daily News" or "the ADN"...
expressed concern that she often seemed 'unprepared or over her head' in a campaign run by a friend." " The book also says that Frank worked on the vetting of Senator Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.Born in Stamford, Connecticut,...
.
Frank is regularly invited to speak on class action issues and related cases in venues such as the Washington Legal Foundation
Washington Legal Foundation
The Washington Legal Foundation is a non-profit legal organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1977, the Foundation's stated goal is "to defend and promote the principles of freedom and justice." The organization promotes pro-business and free-market positions and is widely perceived as...
, the Federalist Society of Washington, D.C. and Houston, Vanderbilt University, the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, the American Constitution Society and at the federal societies of University of Chicago Law School
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...
, Florida State University College of Law
Florida State University College of Law
Florida State University College of Law is the law school of Florida State University in Tallahassee. The law school's highly accomplished and accessible law faculty delivers a program that has an interdisciplinary orientation designed to produce well-rounded and effective lawyers.The law school...
, George Washington University Law School, Stetson University Law School
Stetson University Law School
Stetson University College of Law, founded in 1900, is Florida's first law school. Located in Gulfport, FL , it also has a campus in Tampa, FL. The law school occupies a historic 1920s resort hotel, the Rolyat...
, and the University of Miami Law School. Between December 5–7, 2010, Frank was invited to speak at the 5th Annual Judicial Symposium on Civil Justice Issues. He has appeared on ABC News Now
ABC News Now
ABC News Now is an American 24-hour news channel offered via digital television, broadband and streaming video at ABCNews.com and on mobile phones. It delivers breaking news, headline news each half hour, and wide range of entertainment and lifestyle programs. The channel is currently available in...
, Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, The World on BBC4, Your World with Neil Cavuto
Your World with Neil Cavuto
Your World with Neil Cavuto , which debuted as the Cavuto Business Report on the network's launch in 1996, is an American business television program appearing on Fox News Channel.-About the program:...
on Fox News, RNN-TV News, the Politics and Money programme of Bloomberg TV and has made five appearances on C-SPAN
C-SPAN
C-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
with the AEI.
External links
- TedFrank.com - Personal homepage
- Center for Class Action Fariness
- Manhattan Institute homepage
- Federalist Society biography
- Overlawyered.com - Blog on the U.S. litigation system.
- Pointoflaw.com - web magazine sponsored by the Manhattan Institute on the U.S. litigation system.