All Intensive Purposes

A few days ago, I opined that the prospect of a class action accusing Random House of consumer fraud for publishing A Million Little Pieces as memoir instead of fiction was not only not "inevitable" but "absurd." In the comments to that post, Walter Olson points out that I was wrong almost as soon as I posted:

Saying they were acting on behalf of Pilar More, a mother of two, who felt cheated by the revelations about the truthfulness of "A Million Little Pieces," the Chicago law firm Dale and Pakenas filed suit in a Cook County, Illinois, court against the book‘s publishers, alleging consumer fraud.

The suit seeks status as a class-action lawsuit and lawyer Thomas Pakenas said it might take up to 60 days to get a decision. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

He added, "If somebody sells you a cashmere jacket and it turns out to be polyester, you would feel cheated, right? And even if the collar and lapels were cashmere, it still would be consumer fraud. To defend the book as telling the quote ‘emotional truth‘ is just crap."

Filing is easy; getting a court to agree that there's a case here is another thing altogether. My first thought was that the suit was filed to generate publicity for the law firm involved. A quick web search doesn't turn up any overt signs that these lawyers are shamelessly seeking publicity, though. Nevertheless, like James Frey, I continue to insist that my original post, while now proven wrong, contains some germ of revealed truth.