Richardson v. L’Oreal USA
The district court sustained the Center’s objection to a settlement over shampoo labeling where the class would receive valueless injunctive relief and the attorneys sought nearly $1M for themselves.
The district court sustained the Center’s objection to a settlement over shampoo labeling where the class would receive valueless injunctive relief and the attorneys sought nearly $1M for themselves.
CCAF successfully objected to a settlement that paid $1 million to plaintiffs' lawyers and provided only $830,000 in coupons to class members.
Thanks to the Center’s objection, the parties negotiated a new settlement providing the class with more than $3 million additional recovery.
The Center’s client objected to a settlement over Southwest drink coupons given to “Business Select” passengers as a perk. Thanks to the Center’s involvement in the case, in 2017 the parties agreed to a resolution providing class members triple the recovery than would have been provided under the 2012 settlement agreement.
As a result of the Center’s objection, the parties modified the settlement to increase direct payments to the class by over $5.8M. Our second objection resulted in a third-party recipient of settlement funds that better suited the purpose of the litigation.
The Center for Class Action Fairness objected to and then appealed the approval of a nationwide class settlement where 0.2% of the class received a cash benefit, a total of $225,000, and the remaining class members received low-value coupons. In the same settlement, $8.85 million went to the plaintiffs' lawyers and $3 million to local San Diego universities.
The Center represented a shareholder objecting to a securities class action wherein the $16.5M plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fee request was 4.2 times their normal billing rate. The district court reduced the excessive fee request by $3M.
CCAF objected to the fees in a securities class action in which class counsel sought an outsized percentage of the $590 settlement fund. Ultimately, the parties agreed to waive their cy pres provision in favor of distributing more money to class members.
CCAF represented an objecting class representative on appeal. The Eighth Circuit adopted all of CCAF's arguments; it held that charitable donation of class monies was inappropriate and that cy pres payments should only be used if further distribution to the class is not feasible. In addition, the court criticized the choice of the cy pres recipient because the St. Louis legal aid society was unrelated to the securities injuries alleged in the lawsuit.
The Third Circuit held that the disproportionate ratio requires scrutiny from a district court, and that courts and class counsel should not be indifferent to whether recovery goes to class members or cy pres. On remand, the parties modified the settlement to provide approximately $15 million of additional direct recovery to class members, and the district court awarded CCAF fees for its role in improving the settlement.