Oh, the lawyer will get paid if they win.
Sometimes as much as a third of the settlement.
But do keep in mind they don't get paid until they win and they are shelling out a lot of money until then.
It's not just their time, which however you might feel about it is worth money, there are court fees, experts to hire, and countless other costs that they cover out of their pocket.
It's a huge gamble for them.
Big payoff if they win but really expensive if they lose.
Since this is going to take a long time and the lawyer is going to be facing a wall of lawyers who get paid everyday just to deal with people like him, I suspect he's doing it for more than just the maybe paycheck.
Bingo, people always assume lawyers are only money-grubbing fiends looking to exploit anyone and everyone. That's simply not the case, there are lawyers who are like that but every profession has corruption and people with poor ethics. In almost every contingent fee arrangement (which is what most tort actions are taken as) the attorney has to front all the costs. Expert witnesses, filings fees, their own time, etc. all come out of the attorney's pocket and guess what, if they lose almost no attorney goes after their client for those costs they had to upfront, their just out that money. It's a risk to the attorney and if it doesn't pay off their just out of luck.
I think she believed she was wronged and wants people exposed for what happened. The money just usually comes along with it.
Exactly, what happened was likely not criminal and therefore the only way to hold someone accountable for wrongs falling short of criminal actions is through a civil suit. The only way you can "punish" a corporation is through money. This isn't about making a buck, it's about accountability.
For instance, look at the tobacco settlements. Those companies did a lot of really crummy things for years and because their actions weren't criminal (well, most of their actions anyway, lying to congress is definitely criminal) they couldn't be held accountable in any way except for through civil suits. People harp on the fact that the attorneys made so much money on those cases but at the end of the day they were taking on a significant risk and were doing it to at least try to hold a mega-corporation accountable for a change.
I have not heard of many lawyers that take these cases out of the goodness of their hearts.
Meanwhile, if he was taken by the police due to threats he made I don't see how Target could be held at fault. The cops handcuffed him and took him to the station and I have a hard time believing they take orders from Target.
It depends, first off, did the threat actually occur or was leadership simply relying on hearsay of one team member saying he made the threat. What was the nature of the threat, was it legitimate that it needed police intervention (and handcuffing)? How did they present the case to the police? Did they wrongfully imply that he was an imminent threat with access to weapons which would direct the police to put him in handcuffs? Did they intentionally direct the police to a further away office or an indirect route to the office to question him so that other team members could see him handcuffed?
These are all questions which could be raised at a trial and would all be relevant in establishing Target's culpability in this matter. Right now it's all conjecture based on a scant few articles here and there.
As a personal anecdote we had 2 similar incidents occur at my store while I was an APL. The first incident involved a team member reporting that they were threatened by another team member. We watched video of where the incident occurred and we did see a somewhat heated exchange between the 2 but without audio we just didn't know the nature. Instead we continued to monitor the situation and did our best to make sure they never were together anymore.
In the second incident we had multiple team members confirm the threat so we proceeded to terminate him. We got approval from both the HRBP and APBP for the termination and handled it as discreetly as possible. I monitored the team member on video immediately after the termination as he exited the store and never had any need to draw attention to other team members what was going on. We could have handled it with much less discretion including having police there or have me walk him out personally but we chose not to out of respect to the team member.
Could this threat have been handled in any one of those manners, I'm just not sure because I don't know the full scope of the case. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see where things go from here.
