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From the “Piggy Lawyers Strike Again” file comes a proposed settlement in a class-action suit against Time Warner. Anyone who subscribed to Time Warner Cable from 1994 through 1998 and was on a list that may have been sold can get a free month of cable plus complimentary hookup if they aren't subs now.

Sigh.

From the “Piggy Lawyers Strike Again” file comes a settlement proposed in a class-action lawsuit known as Parker, et al. vs. Time Warner Entertainment Co., et al.

The suit claimed that Time Warner Cable sold personal information pertaining to some of its subscribers to other companies for marketing purposes. The lawsuit also charged that the cable operator is required to tell subscribers how it collects and uses their personal information, and that it failed to do so in compliance with the law. While Time Warner Cable denies that it did anything wrong, the parties have agreed to settle to avoid a trial.

Under the proposed settlement, anyone who subscribed to Time Warner Cable between Jan. 1, 1994 and Dec. 31, 1998 and was on a list of subscribers that may have been sold can get a free month of cable plus complimentary hookup if they aren't subs now. Those who used the service during the dates noted and currently use it can choose a free month of premium services, such as HBO.

The two “class representatives” (translation: easily led, hypersensitive weenies who still haven't figured out why their magazines and TV shows are so cheap) will get $2,500 each.

Meanwhile, if the settlement is approved, the plaintiffs' lawyers will receive $5 million.

George Sampson, lead attorney in the case at the plaintiffs' law firm Hagens Berman Sobel Shapiro of Seattle, defends the settlement, saying it took thousands of hours to overcome Time Warner's aggressive defense.

“This is a case that was filed in 1998. It went up to the second circuit court of appeals,” Sampson says. “Four major law firms worked extremely hard for many years with no promise that we'd ever get paid. We are now getting paid, but it is in no way a windfall to any of these firms.”

At $250 an hour, $5 million translates into 20,000 billable hours — all over a case of list rental.

What are his law firm's rates? “We will present them to the court in their entirety at the appropriate time,” Sampson says.

Sampson further defends the settlement, saying it forces Time Warner to make changes, among them hiring a chief privacy officer. He says Time Warner also agreed to stop making its subscriber list available for rent, in violation of the Cable Act, to other direct marketers. Time Warner denies it violated the act in the first place.

As for the piddling $2,500 awarded to the class representatives, federal law limits the amount class representatives can receive, according to Sampson. As for the rest of the “class,” since there were no records proving individual subscribers' names had been rented, a month of free new or upgraded service was the best that could be done for them, he says.

“Part of the problem was that Time Warner did not keep track of whose names were sold to direct marketers,” says Sampson. “Apparently, it is of no value to direct marketers whose names were sold previously. They would just generate lists based on a request from a direct marketer for people in a certain income level, or a certain area, or subscribers to a Disney channel or whatever, and they would never keep track of them. There was no practical way to actually identify whose names were sold.”

Gasp! Did we hear him correctly? Direct marketers are renting lists based on requests from other marketers and they're not keeping records of whose names have been rented to whom? And get this: Rumor has it that the people who rent these lists use the information attempting to sell things.

Sigh.

The real crime in this whole episode is that Time Warner's lawyers and court resources were tied up with this frivolous nonsense for years, and that Time Warner will pay $5 million to rid itself of the nuisance. Fortunately, the settlement may end up working like a lead-generation program for the firm, which presumably will result in some new long-term subscribers and premium customers.

Meanwhile comes news of a real breach of consumer privacy, and barely a peep has been heard from so-called privacy advocates. New York City has revised its health regulations so that most medical laboratories in the city will be required to electronically forward the results of thousands of peoples' blood-sugar tests to the health department. The effort ostensibly is aimed at saving lives by sending letters to people whose blood-sugar levels are too high, prodding them to take better care of themselves.

It's the first time a city health department has collected information on people who have a chronic disease that isn't contagious. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Friedan says the program's life-saving potential outweighs its privacy risks.

The logical extension of Friedan's argument — monitoring people's alcohol and red meat consumption, for example — is chilling.

If privacy advocates truly were concerned about people's right to be left alone, they would sue New York City. But so far they've been pretty quiet. One suspects these self-proclaimed defenders are motivated far more by a dislike of capitalism than by actual threats to anyone's privacy.