San Francisco Chronicle, "Class Action Lawsuits: They pay but deny any guilt"

          What is the primary function of a class-action lawsuit? If it's to punish a company monetarily for an alleged misdeed, then the system seems to be working fairly well, considering the hundreds of millions of dollars handed out in settlements each year.
          But if the primary purpose of class-action suits is to hold companies accountable for their actions -- and hopefully to learn from their mistakes -- then the system is failing miserably in light of a key aspect of virtually all settlements:
          No one takes any blame. Just the opposite, in fact. Most settlements allow companies to pay out millions of dollars to their alleged victims while simultaneously denying any wrongdoing was committed.
          One of the latest to go down this road is San Francisco's Wells Fargo, which this week said it agreed to pay $12.8 million to settle a lawsuit claiming the bank unlawfully exempted as many as 4,500 workers from overtime pay by classifying them as analysts or consultants. Wells stressed that the settlement in no way should be construed as an admission of guilt.