For example, days after news broke of the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment, LawCash, a settlement-advance company, was trying to cash in. The largest firms make cash advances totaling up to $40 million a year, according to an unpublished 2014 report by Diligence, a business intelligence firm. Legal Bay of Fairfield, N.J., is one of the settlement-advance firms trawling for sexual harassment clients. “That is just opportunistic.”Mr. Colwell said his firm had been providing cash advances to women with sexual harassment claims for 15 years. Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, argue that cash advances artificially drive up litigation costs.

Source: New York Times January 28, 2018 23:03 UTC