A recent Law 360 story by Matthew Santoni, “NJ Judge Oks $12M for 2 Firms in Chemical Price-Fix Deal,” reports that a New Jersey federal court gave its final approval to a $33 million settlement package over the alleged price-fixing and bid-rigging of certain water treatment chemicals, including more than $12 million in attorney fees and costs for Miller Law LLC and Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson PA.

U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo's Nov. 7 approval capped three years of litigation against General Chemical Corp. and others in the multidistrict antitrust litigation who were accused of inflating the price of liquid aluminum sulfate, a chemical used for water treatment and paper production, between 1997 and 2011.  The settlement class includes indirect purchasers of liquid aluminum sulfate in 32 states and the District of Columbia, and the order consolidates multiple other settlement agreements with chemical providers that were filed in April and June.

“This court finds that the settlements are, in all respects, fair, reasonable, and adequate to the indirect purchaser settlement class,” the court’s order said.  “For the sake of administrative efficiency, the funds from each of these six settlements shall be permitted to be aggregated, along with the funds from the earlier [GEO Specialty Chemicals Inc.] settlement, into a single account so that claims may be made against the aggregate of the settlement funds and not separately against the proceeds from each individual settlement.”

With the court's approval of their proposal from September, Stearns Weaver and Miller Law will claim one-third of the total settlement fund, plus $1.2 million in costs, the court order said.  The lead plaintiffs — the city of Homestead, Florida, and the City of Creston Water Works Department in Iowa — will get additional awards of $25,000 each, the order said.

The settlement stemmed from multidistrict litigation that was consolidated in New Jersey in 2016, where a chemical company’s former marketing and sales exec pled guilty in 2015 to violating the Sherman Act with a conspiracy to fix prices, rig bids and allocate customers among companies rather than compete for them.  In addition to General Chemical Corp., the defendants included C&S Chemicals Inc., GEO Specialty Chemicals Inc., Kemira Chemicals Inc., Southern Ionics Inc. and USALCO.

The court noted that there were no objections to the settlement or the proposed fees.  “This complete absence of any objections provides strong evidence that the settlements and the requested fee award, reimbursement of expenses, and class representative incentive awards are fair, reasonable, and adequate and warrant final approval by the court,” the order said.

One of the lead attorneys for the indirect purchasers said the settlement was more than three times the estimated damages.  “It’s not every day you can settle an antitrust class action for an amount that exceeds 100% of treble damages, which is what we achieved for the class here,” said Jay Shapiro of Stearns Weaver.  “Indeed, as explained to the court in our moving papers and at the final approval hearing, we believe that result is unprecedented in antitrust class action litigation.”