“trial lawyers has standing to sue with no plaintiff at all”
That is incorrect. The issue is whether or not these particular attorneys can bring forth a qualified lead plaintiff from among a large pool of potentially qualified class member4s who are co-plaintiffs by default due to their ownership of an affected product. In other words, the judge is allowing the plaintiff attorneys to cure in a timely fashion their initial failure to vet a qualified lead plaintiff from among a group of consumers to the court’s satisfaction who purchased a product that does qualify them as a lead plaintiff.
Are you an attorney. or did you just stay in a Holiday Inn last night? Because a lot of law professors seem to disagree with you. This is not an opt in case, where plaintiffs chose to be plaintiffs to sue the defendant. It is a case where they had to take action to OPT OUT if they did not want to participate because they did not feel injured, or wanted to sue on their own.
At the moment, there is no specific plaintiff for the attorneys to represent, or to receive direction from, and in no other such case has this ever happened before. This is unknown country in the law. The judge is setting a new precedent here which she has no business doing. Her proper course on disqualifying the last plaintiff was to end it lacking a plaintiff. The defense is going to be a distinct disadvantage being handed all new plaintiffs. All of the preparation for this case was done using specific lead plaintiffs. . . not all those amorphous plaintiffs in the cloud out there, the ones making the specific complaints, the ones who were deposed about their grievous economic injuries, and who answered questions under oath in discovery about the emotional distress they suffered when their favorite songs they bought for a bargain from RealNetwork were missing from their iPods after that evil Apple deleted them. HOW, pray tell, do you re-create all of that in the midst of a trial in progress?
After all, it WAS just so convenient and coincidental that the previous plaintiffs were married to their attorneys. . . they could discuss the trial in bed every night. It makes one wonder if the attorneys did not attend that weekend seminar: "Class Actions Law, For Fun and Profit—Keep it in the Family"