RealPage Settlement - Individual Representation with Mason LLP, or Join The Class Action Settlement?
TLDR - trying to decide whether to continue going with independent action with Mason LLP or join the main settlement. Looking for information or input.
There's been a $360m settlement in the RealPage lawsuit. I signed up with a different legal firm, Mason LLP, which will pursue direct action en masse for consumers against RealPage-using landlords. They claim that this is likely to get a higher payment than the settlement. The tradeoff is that this requires opting out of the main settlement, so I'm not guaranteed to get anything, and Mason LLP take 40% of whatever payout I do get after costs. Right now I'm signed up with Mason LLP but can still opt out.
Some additional factors:
- Mason LLP appears to be perfectly legit, and has been reasonably good about communicating with me about this, so I think it's a question of strategy more than anything else.
- I believe companies are liable for triple damages for cases like this, so there's a case to be made that I should be owed $1000s, given a 3x payment for even 5 or 10% of illegal rent inflation over several years.
- The settlement class is in the millions of people, so it's possible the payout will be low.
- My lease does have an arbitration agreement (in addition copy paste bullshit about a pool despite there being no pool) so that is probably a bad sign for getting higher end damages.
- Presumably our current rightwing government makes it harder to get any damages? I'm not sure though.
So, does anyone have information on if this independent strategy has been successful in the past or advice on this?