[solardev]

I don't see the difference between what the lawyers are saying and the parent's summary of it.

> we've wronged too many people to be held accountable

Sounds like exactly what it is... it's too big of a class to be managed, and therefore should not be?

In fact, the very next line is the judge saying:

> Chun found there was no evidence at this stage that the size of the class was overbroad. Other federal courts had certified class actions with millions or hundreds of millions of class members, the judge said.

[mikeryan]

I mean there are technical legal issues in the size of a class. For example, any member of a class can object to any settlement agreement or any multiple groups of class members can object to a settlement making managing approval difficult.

The flip side to Amazons argument though is that if the judge decided the class was too big they could break into multiple classes and Amazon would end up defending themselves on multiple fronts. Usually companies facing these things want to roll it all into a single class for that reason alone.

[gruez]

>Sounds like exactly what it is... it's too big of a class to be managed, and therefore should not be?

You missed the other 2 of the 3 parts of that argument.

>In fact, the very next line is the judge saying:

I'm not saying they're objectively right, just that there's more to the argument than "we've wronged too many people to be held accountable".

[solardev]

So it's not really a strawman at all, and it was in fact one of their main arguments. They just also made other arguments on top of that...

Seems to me the parent was totally justified in calling it a wild argument.

[gruez]

>and it was in fact one of their main arguments

It really wasn't. If you look at the table of contents, the part about was the class being too big was:

1. in one of the two top level arguments (II)

2. of (II), it was one of 6 sub-arguments (F)

3. of (F), the actual argument is "Plaintiffs Have Not Satisfied Rule 23(b)(3)’s Superiority Requirement.", of which the class was too big was one of three factors. For reference the other two are "the individualized issues on which their claims depend, and the overwhelming evidence that the challenged conduct resulted in lower prices in Amazon’s store"

>Seems to me the parent was totally justified in calling it a wild argument.

It really isn't. The specific legal standard is that if the total time to adjudicate all the class members is large, then class certification should be denied. This seems reasonable to me, at least in isolation. What's the point of a legal case that takes so long to resolve that by the time it's finished, everyone involved would be dead? Again, you might not agree with Amazon's argument that it's too complex to be resolved, and it's fine to deride them for thinking that the case is too complex for the court system to handle, but they're simply not making the claim that they should be let off the hook on the basis of 300 million plaintiffs alone.

[solardev]

Sorry, I don't agree that any of that fundamentally changes the wild argument that "we've wronged too many people to be held accountable!".

But, hey, I'm just a rando on the internet. Feel free to disregard this comment.

[gruez]

For one, they can still be held to account through individual lawsuits. Also at least part of the reason behind class action lawsuits is to streamline the lawsuit process. If a lawsuit ends up taking 100 years because that's long it takes to adjudicate each class member (which was the case in a prior unrelated lawsuit), then arguably a class action lawsuit is a poor fit. As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied. If you're allergic to nuance and want to round these considerations off to "you can't be held to account if you wronged too many people", then go for it, I can't stop you.

[fn-mote]

I'm allergic to the idea that these "individualized issues" cannot be resolved by some well-written queries on the sales database. Of course it is in Amazon's best interest that the court not think like a programmer.

[FireBeyond]

> For one, they can still be held to account through individual lawsuits.

No-one's suing Amazon for this on an individual basis. And nor is any lawyer taking this case for a few bucks (literally).

That doesn't mean there has been a wrong. That's part of the purpose of a class action.

> If a lawsuit ends up taking 100 years because that's long it takes to adjudicate each class member (which was the case in a prior unrelated lawsuit)

Citation?