Money Mart Settlement

These Money Mart guys are tough customers.  We have patterned the settlement in Atlantic Canada on the Ontario settlement outlined by Justice Perrell in Smith, but the numbers involved in Atlantic Canada are not nearly as large.

The biggest legal problem we faced is that customers of Money Mart sign arbitration agreements when they deal with Money Mart.  The question was open as to whether the courts here would enforce the arbitration clause and prevent the class action from proceeding.  The plaintiffs and their lawyers did not have this problem in Ontario.  Consequently our settlement contains a major concession based on the risk of losing the arbitration issue.  If we lost on the issue, then class members would get nothing at all. 

Money Mart has a lot of money to protect and they know how to protect it.  They hire the most talented and most expensive lawyers that money can buy.  This is true in Canada, and it is true in the United States where they have corporate headquarters.  When we negotiated with their lawyers in Philadelphia last summer, Money Mart was represented by the former chairman of a 600 lawyer firm in Philadelphia.  Believe me, these guys are litigious.

The benefit of this lawsuit is that class members will get something of value now, rather than the possibility of something of greater value years from now.  I think that is what our clients want.

The components of the settlement are outlined in our press release, and in news reports, and the full details are available in the Settlement Agreement.