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Attorneys Get Fraction of Fee Request in FACTA Settlement

November 27, 2017 | Posted in : Fee Award, Fee Award Factors, Fee Reduction, Fee Request

A recent Law 360 story by Melissa Daniels, “UCLA Shoppers’ Attys Get Fraction of Fees Ask in FACTA Deal,” reports that a California judge said he’d award plaintiffs’ attorneys only about 6 percent of their requested fees for representing consumers in the settlement of a Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act class action against UCLA, after noting in his tentative ruling that “when lawyers accomplish little, they deserve little.”
 
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr. had already granted preliminary approval to a settlement over receipts printed at the University of California, Los Angeles with a projected total value of nearly $1.2 million.  But after an underwhelming number of claims yielded about $20,000 in payouts, the parties negotiated to have about $830,000 of unclaimed funds be designated as cy pres awards to support privacy- and finance-related programs at the university.

After reviewing this outcome, Judge Wiley issued a tentative ruling on that took issue with the fact that the funds were staying within the realm of the university instead of benefiting any class members.  “This isn’t even a revisionary settlement, the money doesn’t revert,” he said. “It just stays.”

As a result of the perceived puffed-up value, Judge Wiley calculated the attorneys’ fees off of a $40,000 settlement value, awarding $13,333 instead of the $227,000 that was requested.  Judge Wiley’s tentative ruling, which he said he would adopt after making a few grammatical tweaks, also cut named plaintiff Cindy Fernandez’ class representative award from $5,000 to $500.  A final report will be due next year.

The suit, filed in March, said UCLA accepted credit and debit cards from at least 1,000 putative class members who made purchases at its establishments in Los Angeles, but that the machines at its points of sale gave receipts that showed an unlawful amount of card number digits — including some receipts that showed the first six and last four numbers of shoppers’ cards and others that showed the first and last four digits.

UCLA said the misprints stemmed from software vendors that the university reasonably relied upon to comply with applicable law — and it also cited its possible immunity as a public institution. Yet the school agreed to settlement without admitting liability to avoid the burdens of litigation, according to settlement documents.

The motion for final approval said the parties determined four programs to benefit from the nearly $830,000 in unclaimed funds: programs for privacy awareness and financial wellness, counselors for students in economic crises, funding for academic courses on privacy and funding and a security audit for the ASUCLA, the student-controlled, nonprofit organization that provides retail and student union services.

Daniel Gaines of Gaines & Gaines APLC, who represents the plaintiffs, defended the “important, worthy goals” of the cy pres programs and said that while he understood Judge Wiley’s point, he still sees the value of the deal at approximately $1.2 million.  “When you’re talking about the university, it’s a little different than when you’re talking about a private corporation,” Gaines said. “This money that’s being spent on projects, it’s projects that otherwise wouldn’t have been expended on.”

The case is Cindy Fernandez v. The Regents of the University of California et al., case number BC656256, in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles.