LAWYERS TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN!
(Everything here is my own personal opinion, hopefully protected under free speech.)
For over a month I have tried getting the details of the settlement between JVC and the class of JVC camcorder owners that the lawyers were supposed to represent in court. There are no mentions of the settlement on the websites of the lawyers involved. Nor on any sites dedicated to class-action lawsuits. Nothing on Google. The lawyers do not return phonecalls or emails so I can only conclude that they have taken the money and run.
That might seem harsh, but it seems at some point the lawyers stopped representing the class and instead made a deal with JVC in some back room, or under a table somewhere. I do not know if cigars and topless women were involved.
The secrecy of the settlement shows how the lawyers agreed to keep silent about the settlement to protect JVC's reputation and keep their settlement costs to a minimum. The thousands of people that sent me their contact information and complaints about their JVC camcorders were never notified of the settlement. I myself received no notice, and I started this whole effort over two years ago!
It has been my experience with other class-action lawsuits that people that fall in the class are given the option of being represented by the lawsuit or opting out, to reserve their right to individually sue at a later time if they choose to do so. To my knowledge nobody in the class received such notice.
What is odd is that Steven Berk, the lawyer that paid me to collect the contact information of one thousand people who were publicly complaining on the Internet about JVC, repeatedly refused my offers to send him the list of people. After several attempts to give him the list I figured he did not need it yet. The only thing Mr. Berk did with the information the thousands of you sent me was to use a few sample complaints to convince the judge that a large number of consumers were affected, and therefore a class action lawsuit was a reasonable thing for the courts to hear. After that point, everything he did became secret and I got cut out of the loop, as was everyone else.
What little I know is that JVC was supposed to put information on their website telling people how to get their cameras fixed or exchanged for free (or whatever the secret settlement mandated.) Apparently, as part of the settlement, JVC only needed to post the information for a limited amount of time on their website. Of course, if nobody was told this information was there, nobody could read it in time and now the information has been taken down. So everyone who has been involved in this lawsuit is back to square one: Pay JVC for "repairs."
I should have known something was wrong earlier on. I noticed anytime Mr. Berk opened his mouth, lies would come out, but I thought the lawyers were still supposed to represent everyone in the class even if their personality left a lot to be desired. Wrong! You can be a liar and a thief and legally get away with it!
As many of you know, I stopped answering all emails because the high number of messages in my Inbox. If you have any real or serious information regarding this settlement, I welcome you to email me at juancarrera@bellsouth.net and I will try to answer.
WORD TO THE WISE
Make sure your lawyer is less of a crook
than the defendant you are suing!
than the defendant you are suing!
