We assume Mr. Ticketmaster will look something like this when he arrives

We assume Mr. Ticketmaster will look something like this when he arrives in court in May*Did we say “massive”? We meant “depressing”.**Did we say “exciting”? we meant “boooooorrriiiinnnnnggg”.If you bought tickets on Ticketmaster’s website between October 21, 1999 and October 19, you’ve probably received an email that looked something like this recently. The email was sent out after a class action settlement was proposed in the case of Curt Schlesinger et al. v. Ticketmaster–a case that was brought on in 2003 when two dudes, Curt Schlesinger of Illinois and Peter LoRe of New York claimed that the convenience fee and the UPS delivery fee charged by Ticketmaster on ticket orders violated California’s False Advertising Law (FAL) and Unfair Competition Law (UCL). The email laid out–in the typically romantic language of law–the exciting** news that, unless you object, you will probably be sent a redeemable discount code for $1.50 per transaction you made (up to seventeen!) that can be applied to…wait for it…future Ticketmaster transactions. If you paid that pesky UPS fee, you could be in line to receive a whopping, $5 discount on such deliveries in the future.The real kicker is that the lead council “will apply for up to $16.5 million in attorneys’ fees and expense reimbursements to counsel for the class and for an incentive award of $20,000 to each of the class representatives,” which could put a bit of a dent in Ticketmaster’s budget–on second thought, it probably won’t, considering (according to the infallible Wikipedia) their annual revenue is somewhere in the billions. They will, however, have to clarify the offending fees as profit generators, which will be hella embarrassing for them. The final approval hearing is May 29, 2012, which will solidify the settlement as long as nobody objects, so keep your fingers crossed, and expect those handling fees–although under a clarified name–to keep on gracing your ticket receipts because, hey, they’ve got to pay those lawyers somehow.