[murbard2]

> The suit filed by the Illinois woman

While this is technically true, it obscures the reality of the matter. I doubt that woman woke up that day and decided in earnest she wanted to sue Kellogs over a poptart.

What likely happened is that Sheehan & Associates decided they wanted to try their hand at a class action lawsuit on the matter.

They need an actual plaintiff for doing that, just one person who, they will argue in court, is representative of anyone who ever bought a pop tart. They're not allowed to just solicit that person directly, so what they'll do is claim that they are "investigating the lack of strawberries in pop tart" and advertise heavily asking for help in their "investigation".

Once they get someone in their office or on the phone, it's easy to lead them towards the filing of a lawsuit (for which they can get paid).

The article does an unusually good job at showing scepticism over what is clearly lawyer-led and not plaintiff-led litigation, down to the title: "law firm sues".

[josho]

Is this necessarily a problem? I don't have the resources to litigate a multi-billion dollar company over their dishonest practices. But if someone knocked on my door and said they'd take all the financial risk I'd be all over the opportunity to help correct industry practices.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

The problem is that it entices people who couldn't have cared less before money was dangled in front of them to participate in the lawsuit for that reason only.

Someone at a law firm deciding that "hey, we could make a lot of money suing Kellogg, now let's go find a reason to do it" is not what I'd consider an appropriate use of the legal system.

[josho]

Yeh, I agree with you. But this is the system we have.

Ideally we'd have a consumer protection group that would have raised the issue decades ago. But, it seems a vast majority of Americans don't trust government to regulate and elect officials that weaken these institutions. Instead they favor letting market do it, and that's how we got here.