State Class Actions

An interesting editorial on the pages of the Wilmington News Journal looks at Delaware Attorney General M. Jane Brady, and her membership in the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). It appears that she was a past chair of the organization from her biography on the Delaware Department of Justice web site. The column tells us that RAGA is "philosophically opposed to class-action lawsuits against any industry."

I confess that I was a little surprised to see that Delaware was one of the states which took part in a class action suit against the Recording Industry. The case settled a couple of days ago. Hearing that Delaware was involved in that litigation, the thought struck me that Delaware hadn't gotten involved in some of the other class action suits brought by Attorneys General from other states. From the editorial:

Besides not joining the tobacco suit, Brady stayed out of class actions against magazine sweepstakes companies and suits against Microsoft, Enron and WorldCom. The latter two companies' shenanigans cost the state employees' pension fund more than $3 million.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the editorial.

A couple of articles that I found on the web about RAGA don't help much. One is from the Christian Science Monitor in July of 2000, called New consumer watchdog on duty, and it seems to portray RAGA in a positive way. On the other hand, the author of an article referred to in the News Journal editorial, Attorneys General for Sale?, presents the group in a negative manner.

Maybe the editorial will prompt a response from our Attorney General in which she explains more about the RAGA and its purposes and goals.