Every year about this time, the Attorney General posts and summarizes all of the Proposition 65 settlements from the preceding year, providing information about which settlements require reformulation of products, which require warnings, which require both, and, most importantly the dollar amounts. This year's 104 page report is here, and the summary is here. And since 2009, Cal Biz Lit has been digging into the AG's report, providing its own analysis (and to cut to the chase, this year's analysis is after the jump of this blog post).
There is much to blog about here, but so as not to bury the lede, let's start with a chart showing, for all bounty hunters settling more than one matter, the highest settlement, the lowest settlement, the average and the number of settlements. (Note that for attorneys/law firms representing more than one client, we have itemized by bounty hunter and totalled for the attorneys/law firms. Those law firm totals are highlighted in yellow. And also note the chart will pop out if you click it, becoming much easier to read.)
More information -- and another complicated chart -- after the jump.
So, in case that chart wasn't complicated and overly-packed with data enough for you, let's put up one more, this one with all the amounts paid for penalties, attorneys' fees and costs and payments in lieu of penalties (which don't get shared with the State of California) in settlements with all the bounty hunters last year. Also, we're showing the percentages of each component, average settlement, and, where applicable, changes from last year (and like the first chart, this one pops out if you click it, becoming almost readable):
(Corrected chart replaced the original May 25 at 3:00 p.m. pdt. Math errors fixed.)
2014 saw 677 settlements totaling $26,482,280, or an average of $43548. In 2015, the number of settlements shot up 27% to 857, but the total amount was down to $26,489,611, for an average settlement of $30,910! From the settlements, 70% went to attorneys' fees and costs. Only 14% went to the State of California; all the rest went to bounty hunters or their lawyers.
Note that CBL's numbers differ a bit from the AG's -- in some instances, where the AG treated a multi-company settlement as a single settlement, CBL divided by the number of companies. And we corrected a few other counting errors.
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