Supreme Court divided on the settlement of the class action for the protection of privacy

The most conservative judges, however, were hostile to plaintiffs and defendants who drafted their own rules and left potential recipients penniless.

"The lawyers get money, and a lot, the members of the group receive absolutely no money," said Judge Samuel Alito. "And money is given to organizations that they may or may not like and who can or can never do anything that has an even indirect benefit to them." How can such a system to be considered a sensible system? "

Regulations such as the one involving Google are approved by the judges when the members of the group do not claim the totality of the money or, as in this case, they are so numerous that the administrative costs would be enormous and the individual product minimal .

In the case that was heard on Wednesday, a federal district judge in California approved and a court of appeal confirmed the wreck of nearly $ 6 million at six universities and target groups non-profit involved in privacy issues on the Internet. The plaintiffs' lawyers received more than $ 2 million.

Some recipients were previously funded by Google, which Chief Justice John Roberts called "shady". Many of them were also associated with universities attended by lawyers, which, according to Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, created an "appearance of favoritism and collusion". One, AARP, targets people over 50 – "like it's a problem for the elderly," Roberts joked.

But liberal judges were more sensitive to lower court judges who recognized the difficulties of spreading money around huge classes and instead looking for non-profit organizations.

"Why is it an abuse?" Deputy Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. "Because in practice, members of the group would have nothing, absolutely nothing, and here, at least, they derive an indirect benefit."

With the court split, judges on both sides acknowledged a potential outcome: Google's suitors may have failed to prove that they had been hurt when their search terms were disclosed on third-party websites. The Supreme Court stated that such harm should be proven rather than simply possible.

If this were the case, the court could refer the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, or even dismiss it outright.

In addition, several judges stated that the resolution of the use of so-called "cy pres" regulations could be a task of the Congress or the Rules Committee of the Federal Courts system, rather than the courts.

Ted Frank leads the Center for Class Action Equality at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (Photo: Competitive Enterprise Institute)

Federal rules require class action settlements to be "just, reasonable, and adequate" in the eyes of the court. When it is not reasonable to spread the product over millions of users – or, as is more common, when money remains unclaimed – regulations benefiting groups third parties are considered "as close as possible" to the desired objective.

Paloma Gaos was brought to court in 2010 after the Google search terms she had used had been leaked to third-party websites, a common practice. In the final agreement, she and other class representatives earned $ 5,000 each, but the largest group of 129 million people who used the Google search engine in the United States from 2006 to 2014 revealed impractical for notification, processing, shipping and other charges.

Ted Frank, who heads the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Class Action Fairness, challenged the rules that lawyers were overpaid, favored recipients were inappropriately chosen, and Google was not required to change its rules. commercial practices.

In court documents, Google argued that an effort to identify and compensate even a significant proportion of group members would use the settlement fund. The six winners – AARP, the World Privacy Forum and the Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Chicago College of Law programs – submitted proposals that were closely aligned with the complainants' claims.