Dan's Papers - June 22, 2007 - My $325 Million Settlement Is On The Way

I got a wonderful letter in the mail this morning telling me that I'm a member of a class action suit and we have made a settlement with the people we are suing, which will result in my being a recipient of some part of a $325,997,000 payout. It's a real letter from the United States District Court of California, and it's a real settlement. I don't have to do anything. They were just letting me know. Sometime in the future they would calculate my share and send me a check.

Needless to say, I've read the whole letter. And as near as I can figure, it all started because around seven years ago, I bought a memory chip, called a DRAM, to beef up one of the computers we have around the office.

We do that maybe once a year here at Dan's Papers, each time a program we use comes out with a new version that requires more memory. One of our older computers is slowed down by the new version. So we go out and spend $75 for this little chip the size of your fingernail and we slide it in a slot and then it works fine again. We might do this two times in a year.

Apparently, from what I can tell by reading this letter, a short time after I bought one particular DRAM chip, a few guys in the computer repair business discovered there was a little monkey business going on here with the guys who manufactured them. They are Kevin's Computer and Photo; PC Doctor, Inc.; JEM Electronics; Dan Clement; Web Ideals, LLC and a few other outfits out in California, and they hired some lawyers who claimed that the different companies who manufacture DRAMS were in cahoots with one another and doing a little price fixing. There were seven companies sued. They included Samsung, Infineon, Hynix Semiconductor and Elpida.

Here's how this court document put it.

"The lawsuit alleges that the defendants engaged in an unlawful conspiracy to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize the prices of DRAM in the United States and/or to allocate among themselves, major customers and accounts in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, Title 15 USC #1. Plaintiffs allege that, as a result of the unlawful conspiracy, they and other members of the Class paid more for DRAM than they would have paid absent the alleged conspiracy."

The document says that the defendants in this case vigorously deny all Plaintiffs' allegations and have asserted numerous affirmative defenses. It also says, however, that four of the defendant companies and certain of their employees have pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the federal antitrust laws.

On the other hand, in order to avoid a long and lengthy trial, everybody seems to have agreed that the seven defendants will shell out $325,997,000 just to get it over with. Of course they do not have to admit they did anything wrong.

For me to participate in this settlement, all I have to do is find the receipts of any memory chips I bought between April 1, 1999 and June 30, 2002, and be ready with them to send in when the time comes so I can get my share of the settlement, which would be equal to the difference between what I actually paid for the memory chips and what I would have paid absent the conspiracy, less the legal fees.

Lawyers handling this case, both for the prosecution and the defense, are petitioning the court to allow them to take as a fee the standard 25% of the $325,997,000 settlement.

The letter goes on to say that I have now past the point where I can "opt out" of being allowed to receive my share of the money, an opportunity they apparently gave me some time ago in a letter which, now that I recall it, I threw out because it seemed so stupid.

Though my chance of running away from all of this is past, what I can still do if I want to object to any part of the settlement -- for example the legal fee percentage -- is show up at the courthouse of the United States District Court fo the Northern District at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, California, go to Courtroom 3 on the 17th floor on July 6, 2007 when such objections will be heard by the Honorable Phyllis J. Hamilton.

Now, where are those receipts for what I bought between eight and five years ago? Ah, here they are, right on the upper-right hand corner of my desk where I've been holding onto them all this time.

But I'm also hungry. I think this calls for a celebration. I am going to call ten of my closest friends and invite them out for champagne and lobster to toast my good fortune.

Of course, the cash is not here yet. So what I'm going to ask is that we all split the check. Except for me. I think I should have to pay only my 1/11th share of 25% of it.