Bloomberg Law wrote about our successful appeal in Kurtz v. Kimberly-Clark Corp.
In the 2022 settlement agreement, Kimberly-Clark agreed to pay up to $20 million to the class. Members of the class could claim as much as $50.60 with proof of purchase and as much as $7.00 without a receipt, the court said. The defendant also agreed to pay up to $4.1 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses, separate from the funds for class recovery, it said.
Ultimately the class members claimed less than $1 million, but the lower court approved the settlement as fair, reasonable, and adequate under the Federal Rules.
Class action activist Theodore Frank objected and later appealed the approval arguing that it was unfair. The agreement “disproportionately benefited class counsel” because they received most of the monetary relief actually paid out, he said.
The court held that Federal Rule 23(e) requires a proportionality analysis between the class recovery and the fee award, but the benchmark for determining proportionality is a fact-bound one best left to the district court’s discretion.
Read more at Bloomberg Law.