A recent Law 360 story by Lauren Berg, “Facebook Users’ Attys Get $185M In $725M Meta Privacy Deal”, reports that counsel representing a class of more than 200 million Facebook users will take home nearly $181 million in fees and $4 million in costs after a California federal judge granted final approval to the $725 million deal resolving privacy claims over the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal.  U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria put his final stamp of approval on the $725 million settlement that the preliminarily certified class reached with Meta Platforms Inc. in December.  Judge Chhabria also awarded class counsel $180.4 million in attorney fees, which equals 25% of the settlement fund, and almost $4 million in costs, according to the simultaneously filed orders.

The fee and costs take into account amounts previously awarded to class counsel as sanctions, according to the order, including in February when Meta and its attorneys at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP were ordered to pay $925,000 over their "unusually egregious and persistent" misconduct delaying discovery and gaslighting of opponents in seeking to extract a lower-priced settlement.

"The court does not take lightly the concern that a fee award equaling 25% of the settlement fund can be inappropriate in cases involving a massive monetary recovery for the class," Judge Chhabria said in the order.  "In many such cases, the 25% benchmark will be too high."  "As a result, the court has viewed the proposed fee award with greater skepticism, and less deference to the 25% benchmark, than in a typical case," he added.  "That said, the court finds that the attorneys' fee award is fair and reasonable under the percentage-of-the-recovery method."

The fee amount represents a 1.99 lodestar multiplier for roughly 150,000 hours of attorney work done over the past five years, which is below average in settlements of comparable size, the order states.  The judge said the settlement is a substantial portion of the maximum amount of damages the class could have recovered after trial and an appeal.  Novel legal issues and complicated facts, as well as Meta's resources and "aggressive approach to litigation," created a risk that the class would take home nothing — a risk shouldered by Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP and Keller Rohrback LLP, according to the order.  "The magnitude of the settlement fund is due more to the efforts of counsel than the size of the class," Judge Chhabria said.

The parties secured preliminary approval of the $725 million deal in March, before asking for final approval in July, in which the users touted the nearly 6% claims rate as "well above claims rates approved in other large settlements."  But objectors told the court later that month that the deal was overly broad and unfairly favorable to certain Facebook users.

Class members Stewart Harris and Ryan Cino argued that the likelihood that someone's data was compromised "almost certainly depends" on how many Facebook friends they had, which means users with fewer friends are getting just as much compensation despite having faced less risk.  And Sarah Feldman argued the settlement is too small, saying the potential damages in the case could be $6.25 billion.

At a final approval hearing in September, however, Judge Chhabria lauded the high rate of class participation, saying he was "blown away" that over 17.7 million valid claims have been submitted in what may be the largest response to a U.S. class action.  The judge granted final approval to the settlement, finding that more than 93% of the target audience of 253 million Americans had received notice of the settlement.  He also overruled the settlement's objectors.