Mr. Frank filed a legal objection to this settlement, arguing that the plaintiffs’ lawyers enriched themselves to the detriment of consumers. To begin with, he said that claimants were steered toward the gift card because they could request it online. To get a check, they had to send a snail mail letter.

Now, note that the gift card is not called a coupon, even though it sounds, to the Haggler’s naïve ears, a lot like a coupon. Who cares what it’s called? It turns out that plaintiffs’ lawyers care because of the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), passed by Congress in 2005. Part of the point of the act was to reduce the number of exceptionally lame mass settlements, some of which were described in a Senate Judiciary Committee report at the time. The Haggler’s favorite: $55 off on the purchase of a crib from a company that was accused of making defective cribs.

CAFA addressed coupons. One of its stipulations was that in coupon cases, lawyers would be paid based on the number of people who actually redeemed coupons instead of the number of people who were eligible for those coupons.

The point is to incentivize plaintiffs’ lawyers. Typically, lawyers get 25 percent of a total settlement in such cases. So the more relief they deliver to consumers, the more the lawyers earn.

Unfortunately, that 2005 law did not define “coupon.” Oops. In the Walmart case, a Federal District Court judge ruled that what was offered in the settlement was not a coupon, for a few reasons. Among them: The gift cards were transferable, and they had no expiration date.

This was good news for the plaintiffs’ lawyers. They could collect a quarter of the value of the gift cards that were sent to consumers who asked for them — which totaled $8.9 million — not a quarter of the value of the cards that were actually used.

So how many of those gift cards have been cashed in? We don’t know. That information has not been publicly revealed, Mr. Frank said. And the lead lawyers’ firm for the plaintiffs in the case, BakerHostetler — a firm that apparently can’t afford a space between its names — declined the Haggler’s request for an interview.