The link out to another story[1] has some interesting details...
"In December 2019, at the end of a long-running series of civil cases, the Post Office agreed to settle with 555 claimants."
So settlements in 555 of the original 700+ prosecutions.
"It accepted it had previously "got things wrong in [its] dealings with a number of postmasters", and agreed to pay £58m in damages. The claimants received a share of £12m, after legal fees were paid."
But 80% of the settlement money went to lawyers. Ugh.
The percentage isn't the problem. The problem is of the settlement amount doesn't include damages and also legal fees, both of which should be the responsibility of the perpetrators.
I disagree. Even the ambulance chasers here in the U.S. take around 40% as their contingency fee. 80% is just...wow.
Edit: "ambulance chasers" in this context means very opportunistic lawyers that are primarily motivated by money, and not helping their clients. I don't see how that term is disparaging any victims/clients. The comparison is that even outright greedy lawyers aren't taking half+ of the settlement. In this case, using £250/hr, the lawyers spent 88 lawyer years worth of time (184k hours).
It was an extremely complex case which was very hard to prove, against companies which belong to the establishment and had been shown the benefit of the doubt by the legal system on multiple occasions.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
"Ambulance chasers" (a terrible slur that looks down on weak victims pursuing justice), offer their services in a competitive market. If they charge too much, again, that should be determined by having a separate pool for fees separate from damages, and be a dispute between the perpetrator and the lawyer, not the victim and the lawyer.
The cost of the legal work is uncorrelated to the size of the damages.
Limiting legal fees just makes it not cost effective to pursue justice for smaller damages with more complex cases.
It's absurd bordering on evil to say the problem here is that people got paid too much for their excellent work (fighting against the resources of a corrupt major corporation and a corrupt major world government!) not that the perpetrators was under punished for their horrific crime.
The heroes who saved 700 people's lives deserve the money more than super-wealthy psychopathic perpetrators.
Then why not give them 99.9% of the take if they are such big heroes?
Because for the lawyers to get all the money each time harm happens means they more from harm to people than the people themselves benefit, this is a perverse incentive to keep the system exactly as it is for people who often become our lawmakers.
This response bears no relation to the topic at hand. As said earlier, the damages and the legal fees are two separate things that shout be kept separate.
> "Ambulance chasers" (a terrible slur that looks down on weak victims pursuing justice), offer their services in a competitive market.
I wonder how other countries get by without "ambulance chasers". The only country I know that has them is the US, and their existence is the sign that something is fundamentally wrong.
There's obviously a lot of detail there, but it does still feel to me like more than £12M should have gone to the actual post workers. That's ~22k each.
"In December 2019, at the end of a long-running series of civil cases, the Post Office agreed to settle with 555 claimants."
So settlements in 555 of the original 700+ prosecutions.
"It accepted it had previously "got things wrong in [its] dealings with a number of postmasters", and agreed to pay £58m in damages. The claimants received a share of £12m, after legal fees were paid."
But 80% of the settlement money went to lawyers. Ugh.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036