CCAF filed an objection on July 11, 2019 arguing that because this is a megafund settlement, any fee award should be significantly less than the 25% benchmark. Plaintiffs' counsel also drastically overstate their lodestar with millions of dollars of work by contract attorneys billed at excessive rates.
The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute successfully represented an objector in Stericycle Securities Litigation, where all of the attorneys are supporters of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, who has sole control over one of the named plaintiffs. The Seventh Circuit vacated the fee award on appeal, and plaintiffs’ counsel agreed with HLLI to reduce their excessive fee request, to avoid further litigation.
Samsung sold top-loading washing machines that sometimes violently vibrate and “explode,” but the settlement provides mostly mail-in rebates to class members. Attorneys should not be able to guarantee a generous fee award for themselves while class members are stuck at best with rebate coupons that require them to buy again from the allegedly negligent defendant. The district court reduced the fee award, but otherwise approved the settlement.
The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute represents an objector to the settlement of Littlejohn v. Ferrara Candy Co., which pays attorneys $600 to $1170/hour, but provides absolutely nothing to class members in exchange for waiving their monetary claims.
Class member and CCAF director Ted Frank successfully objected to the settlement of Cowen v. Lenny & Larry’s, Inc., which would have provided class members at most $350,000 but paid attorneys $1.2 million in hard cash—not cookies.
CCAF attorneys object to settlements with two airlines because the settlements do not explain how class members will be compensated, and the money might be diverted to third party cy pres beneficiaries.
Class member and CCAF attorney Adam Schulman objected to a slack fill settlement that provides class members with worthless labeling changes.
On June 25, 2018, Judge Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York largely agreed with the objector concerning contract attorney billing, which results in nearly $100 million additional dollars going to class members. In spite of the successful objection, CCAF was only awarded $11,000 in attorneys fees.
Class members and CCAF attorneys Ted Frank and Melissa Holyoak take their objection to Google search settlement to the Supreme Court. The settlement provided $0 to class members, but divided $8.5 million between the plaintiffs’ lawyers and third party cy pres recipients.
CCAF represents an objector to settlement where class counsel sought attorneys' fees of more than $7700 per hour of work on the case. At the same time, class members recover less than 10% of the potential value of their claims.
,_N401WN_-_LAX_(24891087549).jpg){kind=link}