A recent Law 360 story by Matthew Santoni, “5 Law Firms Seek $1.5M in Fees in GNC ‘Phantom Markdown’ Deal,” reports that five law firms representing customers in a $6 million settlement with General Nutrition Centers over the company’s alleged “phantom markdowns” online have asked a Pittsburgh federal judge for $1.5 million in fees and costs.

Attorneys from Ahdoot & Wolfson, Carlson Lynch, Finkelstein & Krinsk, Barbat Mansour & Suciu and Nathan & Associates represented an estimated 3.6 million GNC customers who can get their choice of cash refunds or vouchers for goods on GNC’s website that it claimed were marked down from an inflated “regular” price.

“Despite the risk and uncertainty of class certification and continued litigation, the settlement provides the very remedies that plaintiffs sought in their first amended complaint: monetary relief for the alleged represented discounts and an actual discount of GNC’s everyday pricing that they advertised,” their motion for attorney fees said.  GNC had agreed not to object to the fee request when the parties submitted the proposed settlement in August; U.S. District Judge Mark R. Hornak gave the deal his preliminary approval in September.

In the fee motion, the consumers’ attorneys said they had collectively spent more than 1,800 hours over three years working on the case.  They had attempted mediation in 2017 and could not reach an agreement, but kept working on the potential settlement, the motion said.

“Even though class counsel were experienced in false-discount class actions such as this, navigating through the issues raised required exhaustive investigation of the facts and underlying events relating to the claims, as well as the applicable legal principles bearing on this litigation,” the motion said.  “Class counsel spent significant time reviewing and analyzing thousands of pages of documents and data produced by GNC, which included extensive records regarding thousands of pages relating to the alleged false-pricing scheme during the class period, competitor pricing, pricing history, transactional history, pricing calendars, and advertisements.”

The firms asked for about $1.45 million in fees and $50,000 in costs, which they attributed mostly to hiring the mediator and experts.  The outcome of the settlement compared favorably to numerous other “phantom markdown” suits that had recently been settled, the motion said, including a $4.9 million deal with Michael Kors LLC in 2015.  At rates of $300 to $950 per hour for each attorney’s time, the proposed fee award also compared favorably to the $1.05 million “lodestar” the firms would get if they had charged by the hour, the motion said.