A recent Law 360 story by Emilie Ruscoe, “Robbins Geller Seeks $11M in Fees for BRF ‘Food Fraud’ Suit,” reports that a Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP counsel team wants a little under a third of the $40 million settlement they earned for a proposed class of investors who had accused Brazilian meat and food processing giant BRF SA of fraud and bribery, the firm told a New York federal judge.  In a Sept. 18 memorandum laying out its request for attorney fees, litigation expenses and an award for lead plaintiff the City of Birmingham Retirement and Relief System, the four-lawyer Robbins Geller legal team told U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel that the firm seeks 27.5%, or $11 million, of the settlement total.

The firm also asked for $94,821.84 to reimburse the expenses they incurred fighting the case, and said the institutional investor lead plaintiff should get "a modest award of $2,889.15" for its work representing the proposed class.  "The settlement is an outstanding result for the class given the serious obstacles to recovery; the numerous credible defenses to liability and damages that defendants have articulated, the fact that the court might have accepted defendants' arguments at the motion-to-dismiss stage, the difficulty in obtaining documentary and deposition evidence from Brazil, and the recovery relative to the amount of estimated recoverable damages suffered by the class," the plaintiffs' counsel told Judge Castel.  The firm added that over two years, its team spent 3,200 hours working the case.

BRF and its shareholders told the court in May they had reached the multimillion-dollar settlement after a little more than a month of negotiations. According to the settlement terms, the company and some of its executives, who are also named in the suit, "have denied, and continue to deny, any and all of the claims alleged in the litigation, including any allegations of fault, liability, wrongdoing, or damages whatsoever."

The investors' suit launched in March 2018, and in the most recent version of the allegations, filed in November 2019, the investors accused the company of engaging "in an unprecedented and massive case of food fraud."  The shareholders alleged that the the trading price of the company's American depositary receipts fell by $0.99, or 7.73%, in March 2017 following the arrest of several BRF employees and "numerous public officials" in connection with a yearslong investigation by Brazilian authorities called "Operação Carne Fraca," or "Operation Weak Flesh."