I received notice of a settlement pending for a class-action lawsuit.
I did not meet the definition of people who comprise the class. Members of the class must have opened an account with a particular financial institution during a specific period of time. I had never opened an account with that institution nor with any other that had merged with it.
I contacted the settlement administrator through a web form. Weeks later, I received an email response that "assured" me that I was indeed a member of the class because I had been assigned a member ID number.
I wrote a letter to the court (per the instructions in the settlement notice) objecting to the settlement. I argued that my erroneous inclusion in the class suggested that the scope of impact was not understood and thus it would be premature to settle.
Almost immediately, a lawyer for the plaintiffs asked me to withdraw my objection. She pointed out that the court had already accepted the determination of who was and wasn't in the class. We debated it for a while. In the end, I declined to withdraw my objection.
Why was the lawyer intent on getting me to withdraw my objection? I can't see any circumstance in which the court would have entertained my objection for even a moment:
If the court accepted my assertion that I'm not a member, then I wouldn't have had standing to object.
If the court rejected my assertion (because the court had already approved the list of class members), then my objection that the class membership is incorrect would have been moot.
