The Lawyer Taking On The Class Action Racket

Ted Frank wants to protect consumers and investors from the plaintiff lawyers who purport to speak for them. He is not a popular figure in the litigation bar.

Quixotic quest: make the lawyers filing class actions more interested in the welfare of their clients than in lining their own pockets. The crusader on this mission: Theodore H. Frank, the 54-year-old co-founder and lead actor at a nonprofit called the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute.

The class lawsuit industry is a peculiarly American one in which law firms collect fees for bringing cases against corporations on behalf of thousands or millions of victims. The misdeed alleged might be charging an impermissible overdraft fee, issuing a merger document that is insufficiently wordy or leaving too much air at the top of a cereal box.