The Boston Globe’s Andrea Estes, who first reported the story of double billing in the ATRS v. State Street settlement in 2017 covers the district court’s February 27, 2020 fee order:
A federal judge has ordered Boston-based Thornton Law Firm and a New York firm to give back nearly $15 million they collected by dramatically inflating their bills.
Judge Mark L. Wolf concluded that Thornton, along with the Labaton Sucharow law firm of New York, double-billed for some attorneys working on a class-action lawsuit involving State Street Bank, and billed for others that didn’t even work for them, boosting their overall legal charges by millions.
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Ted Frank, a critic of attorneys’ fees in class-action lawsuits who had offered to assist the court in this case, called Wolf’s decision important.
“We’re gratified that the court recognized the problems we identified and went beyond the special master’s proposal to return millions of dollars to class members,” said Frank, director of litigation at the Washington-based Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute. He expressed slight disappointment that the penalty to the two firms wasn’t harsher, “but maybe disciplinary bodies will start taking this seriously and there will be other consequences.”