
"Anthem will not have to admit to any wrongdoing"
Hundred million sting! Not bad and couldn't happen to a nicer bunch! Hope GDPR leads to mucho billion dollar fines for corporate complacency....
Health insurer Anthem has today agreed to pay $115m to settle a class-action suit brought on by its 2015 cyber-theft of 78.8 million records. The settlement fund will be used to cover damage costs incurred by people who had personal information including their names, dates of birth, addresses, and medical ID numbers stolen …
Less than modest, more like trivial. Anthem's turnover if $85bn a year.
As primarily a healthcare insurer with other lines of business, I would guess that the average revenue per customer is around what, $8,000 per customer per year? So paying $1 per customer record isn't going to even register with them.
The US regulators have it all the wrong way round. Rather than bilking a few million dollars for a "not our fault" settlement, they should forgo the money, and insist that companies admit liability. Then let the civil courts and customers determine the penalty.
Another Brockovich arrangement, then ?
How is it legal that lawyers who have been subject to absolutely no prejudice get more money than all the people who have ?
In absolutely every other professional domain, if you arrange a contract between two entities, you get at most 15% of what the guy who actually does the job gets. Only in the courtroom can you arrange to get such a return and set yourself before everyone else.
Yeah, I know they worked. It's still disgusting.
Anthelmintic resistance. The lawyers have been in the gut of Justice, doing what they do, for so long that, even though we know what they're doing, they just do what they want, ethical outrage has no effect.
Anthem, Anthelmintic, pure happenstance. Just a memory aid.
In the generalized case, class action lawyers who agree to a modest settlement with substantial full-rate fees to themselves from said settlement, could turn around and also receive under-the-table kickbacks from the wrongdoer (oops, they never admit they goofed). The settlement is a "negotiation" where only one side of the dispute is at the table. I wonder if the Panama Papers have been scanned with an eye to this sort of possibility, though maybe even Secret Banking is considered too open for such a transaction. Even if such happened only once: comped privileges at a country club or wholesale pricing of a company's product; it is a monstrous breach of trust.
Kickbacks or none, courts, which are good at picking holes in and nullifying poorly thought-out legislation, are overdue for retooling the class action aspect of their own existence. IANALBIPOOTI.
.. whilst victims get fucked.
It's the way of politics and big business.
At that sort of penalty cost it would be cheaper for them to remove all the IT security and leave the doors wide open and pay the tiny fines when they arrive.
These Corporations are in bed with your government and openly laughing in your face.