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.
CCAF successfully objected to the proposed settlement for its severely imbalanced result and giving the attorneys a guaranteed payday that will exceed class recovery.
CCAF argued the plaintiffs’ attorneys are attempting to overpay themselves by taking over one-third of the net settlement fund, or $2.33 million, which is substantially more than the median fee award in similar cases.
CCAF asked the court to investigate overbilling that was not disclosed to the court or the class. Judge Koh agreed and appointed a special master to investigate overbilling, subsequently reducing the final fee award by $6.9 million.
After nearly a year and a half without response from the agency, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (and now the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute) is representing individuals taking the Federal Communications Commission to court over the 2016 Charter/Brighthouse/Time Warner cable merger.
The proposed settlement provided class members with worthless injunctive relief, simply codifying labeling changes that Harmless Harvest voluntarily made in 2015, but would have provided $575,000 to attorneys and named plaintiffs. The court agreed with CCAF that the settlement was not fair, reasonable, and adequate.
Under the settlement, class members will receive $10 vouchers for use on Art.com's ecommerce sites. The settlement has hallmarks of the coupon-settlement abuse that Congress targeted with the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.
On July 7, 2017, the district court granted final approval of the settlement, even though more than 80 percent of the settlement fund would go to class counsel rather than the class members.
