Gmail Your Way to Class Certification

If you happen to use Google’s Gmail to send messages to your friends about the demise of Bear Stearns, you could have a curious advertisement pop up. The Seattle-based plaintiffs firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro is using Gmail’s advertising service to alert Bear Stearns employees to a potential class action the firm has filed on behalf of employee shareholders.

And according to Mark Firmani, a spokesperson for Hagens Berman, the tactic is working. “The firm has been inundated with e-mails and calls from Bear Stearns employees who have been devastated by the loss of their [employee stock] plans,” says Firmani.

The firm filed the proposed class action on Monday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York and is now awaiting class certification.

This is not the first time the firm has employed Gmail’s advertising system (which targets consumers by scanning e-mail text) to alert potential plaintiffs. Firmani says the firm has been using this type of advertising for four or five years now.

Comments

[Mark Firmani]

Thanks, Atilla, for the story. You got everything right, but thought I would provide a bit more context. The ads were not specific to Gmail, but were part of a larger search engine optimization (SEO) campaign for the firm. The service – Adwords – allows the firm to target its message on Google, Gmail, among other online resources. While my legal PR firm would like to take the credit for starting this trend (admittedly, we were among the first), it is widely used by firms across the country.

The goal of the campaign was to make sure Bear Stearns employees were aware that they have recourse, in this case by participation in an ERISA suit filed by the firm.

One clarification – the firm had received a remarkable volume of calls and e-mails before we began the campaign. I believe is a testament to the deep and broad anger by Bear Stearns employees who saw their retirement funds vaporized, shortly after the organization’s leadership was touting the company’s financial fitness.

Mark Firmani | Firmani + Associates Inc.
www.firmani.com