By Mike Lange, Securities Litigation Counsel, Financial Recovery Technologies

If you didn’t have enough reasons to use a class action claims filer, here’s another one. The Supreme Court may approve changes to Rule 23 governing class certification, which would go into effect in December 2018. One potential change is around the distribution of notices.

Specifically, the proposed change specifies that in addition to regular mail, notices can be distributed via “electronic means, or other appropriate means.” In other words, administrators may soon be sending you e-mails, texts, and communications through apps, social media, and other outlets. This approach could create operational challenges for firms:

• Electronic notices may be treated as spam and be deleted. Unlike mail, electronic communications cost nothing, so they’ll be plentiful. Your inbox may already be inundated with solicited and unsolicited emails, and your firm may have implemented filters to help lessen unwanted email.

Why could this be an issue? Electronic notices may contain links or attachments and be blocked as spam. 

• Administrators may not have the correct email. Most organizations have one central address for physical mail. Not so for e-mail, social media, and text messages and since administrators won’t necessarily know the right employee at your firm with whom to communicate, they’ll likely either send it to a general mailbox or to multiple people identified some other way. And the “wrong” recipients may or may not forward them to the right person(s). You could try to give every administrator the proper address for electronic communications, or ask them to remove you from them. Besides the time and resource investment to do so, results may be uncertain.

Why could this be an issue? Tools like Outlook read receipts will evidence actual notice by someone at your organization. So you can’t excuse late claim filings by arguing you didn’t receive notification – the administrator has electronic proof someone there did.

By contrast, FRT clients can simply disregard the communications – everything is already covered – and if the volume becomes a nuisance, we can instruct the administrators to send future notifications – electronic or otherwise – directly to us and take you out of the chain altogether.

Learn More

To learn more about FRT’s Claims Filing services, contact your FRT representative or email us at learnmore@frtservices.com.

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Founded in 2008, Financial Recovery Technologies (FRT) is a leading technology-based services firm that helps the investment community identify eligibility, file claims and collect funds made available in securities and other class action settlements. Offering the most comprehensive range of claim filing and monitoring services available, we provide best-in-class eligibility analysis, disbursement auditing and client reporting, and deliver the highest level of accuracy, accountability and transparency available. For more information, go to www.frtservices.com.

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