Carrier Corporation Case Study
International Settlement Agreement Administered Through Customized Communications and Reporting

Background
The United States District Court of Washington approved a settlement for a class action lawsuit filed by past and current owners of high-efficiency furnaces built and sold by Carrier Corporation. The suit asserted that as early as 1989, Carrier Corporation began to manufacture furnaces that were outfitted with secondary condensing heat exchangers that were made of lesser materials. As a result many of the products sold failed prior to the 20-year warranty issued by Carrier Corporation.

It is estimated that nearly 3 million people in the United States (U.S.) and Canada had purchased a furnace that may have been affected by the faulty condensing heat exchangers. The terms of the agreement included an enhanced warranty of free service and free parts for consumers whose furnaces have not yet failed. It also made available a cash reimbursement for those consumers who had replaced or repaired the condensing heat exchanger in their furnaces.

Results
Working closely with both Plaintiff and Defense Counsel, in the U.S. and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Quebec, our Class Action consultants advised the litigators on communication and noticing strategies and expected response rates prior to the settlement to. Upon settlement approval, our team collected class member information and combed through the records to identify and eliminate duplicates, and nearly 500,000 class members were invited to participate in the settlement.

As the class members were noticed, we worked to facilitate the collection of disparate warranty information to confirm claimants’ eligibility and participation. To better communicate with class members, a custom website was developed that featured the details of the settlement, qualification requirements and the claims administration process. We also engaged Call Center specialists, who spoke English and French, to field inquiries related to the settlement agreement.

To ensure Counsel was aware of the activities related to the settlement, our team established a weekly reporting system. This report was distributed to all of the litigators involved in the case and included data relative to the claimants, furnace models, communication tools and rates of response. After a year of administering the settlement, our team successfully distributed nearly $1.5 million in cash disbursements to claimants in the U.S. and Canada.

We received feedback from Carrier’s General Counsel’s office that the work done on their behalf was “extremely diligent, careful, and accurate”, and we “always kept both sides informed on a timely basis when issues arose.”