Washington D.C. — On Tuesday, July 1, the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute won an appeal in Kurtz v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., which vacated final approval of a lopsided settlement that earmarked more money for attorneys than the class.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated and remanded to the district court. The court agreed with our appeal in holding that the district court “erred when it applied Rule 23(e) without considering the allocation of recovery between the class and class counsel.”
HLLI objected to the original settlement, under which class members received less than $1 million while attorneys requested nearly $4 million.
In its opinion, the Court clarified that assessing the fairness of a class action settlement requires courts to evaluate the proportionality of the total recovery, “Today, we clarify that this tandem analysis of class relief and attorney’s fees requires courts to compare the proportion of total recovery allocated to the class to the proportion of total recovery allocated to class counsel.”
The name of the case is Kurtz v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., No. 24-425 (2d Cir.).
For more information about this case, please see our case page or contact the attorney below:
Anna St. John, President, (917) 327-2392, anna.stjohn@hlli.org.
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