A recent The Recorder story, “Tigar Awards $158M to Lawyers in Price-Fixing MDL,” reports that a federal judge has approved a $158 million fee award for the attorneys who extracted over $500 million in settlements from electronics firms in one of the region's massive price-fixing cases.

The award for class counsel in the cathode ray tube antitrust litigation, led by Mario Alioto of Trump, Alioto, Trump & Prescott, may be a whopping sum.  But it's not as much as the attorneys had requested.  They had sought a third of the $576.7 million settlement fund, or roughly $192.2 million.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of the Northern District of California reasoned that the complexity of the case and the fact that it was litigated on contingency for eight years merited a bump in fees beyond the 25 percent benchmark established in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

But Tigar also noted that the admittedly large total settlement to benefit indirect purchasers was still considerably smaller than it could have been.  Class counsel had estimated that damages were over $2 billion, before trebling, and a similar antitrust suit centered on alleged price fixing of LCD panels yielded settlements totaling more than $1 billion.

"On balance, the court finds on one hand that the complexity, risk, and contingent nature of the fee all suggest an award above the 25 percent benchmark," the judge wrote.  "On the other hand, the size of the settlement as a percentage of the total potential recovery, the awards in comparable cases, and the need to conduct further litigation and provide additional notice related to the Chunghwa settlement … suggest that any increase be modest in size."

The civil class action was launched in 2007 on the back of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into price fixing for cathode ray tubes, a key component in older TVs and monitors.  It sought to reclaim the amount that consumers were allegedly overcharged because of collusion between such electronics giants as Samsung, Philips, Panasonic and Taiwan-based Chunghwa Picture Tubes.

The settlement was a divisive one, even pitting family members against each other.  Frances Scarpulla, a solo antitrust lawyer in San Francisco who is Alioto's second cousin, objected to the deal in large part because it released the legal claims of consumers in a number of states without giving them any money.  He also attacked Alioto's tracking of his billable hours.

Those objections were overruled by Tigar when he granted final approval to the settlement in July.  He noted that the laws of the states in question don't allow consumers—as indirect purchasers—to collect damages from alleged price fixing.  That means their legal claims could well be worthless, Tigar wrote then.

"[N]o Ninth Circuit case holds that the release of a class action claim must be compensated in all instances," he wrote, "and this court will not break new ground by announcing one."