Incalculably worse.
So let’s start there:
By comparison, citrus canker is nothing.
I’m not sure I’d ever even heard of it until I opened my mailbox yesterday to find six identical envelopes sent from Faribault, Minnesota promising “Important Settlement Enclosed.”
Had I won a coupon for $5 off my next purchase of “Original” Smart Balance in settlement for their having surreptitiously changed the formula to something awful?
Out of curiosity, I opened the first envelope and found — guess what! — a check for $439.52.
Do you know how much Smart Balance I can buy with that once they restore the original Original? (You have to love their own website showing 2,019 1-star reviews and just 150 2-star or better. The few 5-stars I read also hated the new product; they were just happy Conagra promises to switch back.)
The other five checks ranged from $197.44 to $924.03, my share, apparently, of $77 million that Miami-Dade County homeowners had won in a class action against the Florida Department of Agriculture for cutting down 247,000 “uninfected, non-commercial” trees to prevent the spread of citrus canker.
Leave aside the merits of the case. (Here’s how the $49 million appropriately named Orange County settlement was reported.)
Leave aside that the folks in Orange County are getting more than twice as much per tree as we poor shlubs in Miami-Dade . . . and that my own Florida taxes are helping to pay me (and $11 million to the attorneys).
Leave all that aside.
Here’s what struck me:
This all happened between 2000 and 2006.
Unbeknownst to me, lawyers have been fighting to get me justice in this matter for 20 years.
And it finally arrived.
One could argue our judicial system moves too slowly.
And one could wonder whether the checks I may get as a result of ParkerVision’s various lawsuits, seeking compensation for what it alleges is the willful infringement of patents germane to the workings of virtually every cell phone in the world, will be larger.
The Intel trial is currently set to begin February 6, with Qualcomm to follow.
ParkerVision has been pursuing justice in this matter for 20 years.
Oy.
