A recent NLJ story, “Plaintiffs Reduce Fee Demand in Prius Litigation,” reports that five plaintiffs’ law firms that originally sought $4.7 million in attorney fees in a class action settlement over Prius headlight defects have agreed to lower their fee request to $855,000.  The firms submitted the updated fee request on Monday before U.S. District Judge Manuel Real in Los Angeles.  Real, who approved the settlement in 2011, originally granted $760,000 in fees, calling the initial fee request by five firms "highly unreasonable" for such a simple case.

But on Dec. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, concluding that Real should have based his decision on the lodestar method, or by evaluating actual billing records.  Instead, Real had awarded 20 percent of the settlement’s value, which he estimated at about $3.8 million.  It was one of the Ninth Circuit’s latest rulings addressing the reasonableness of a class action fee award.

The Prius class action alleged that the model’s high-intensity discharge, or HID, headlights were prone to intermittently turning on and off.  The settlement, which resolved the claims by about 300,000 customers provides cash reimbursements for bulb replacements made during the past five years, or 50,000 miles, and extended warranties for those who had yet to repair their cars.

On Friday, all five firms filed a stipulation with Toyota Motor Corp., which makes the Prius, to request the agreed upon amount.  Before filing the stipulation, four of the five firms had submitted renewed fee requests for much more than that—although for less than their original demands.

The firm awarded the bulk of the fees, San Francisco’s Girard Gibbs, which initially sought more than $1.8 million, had moved for $1.25 million this time around.  The three other firms were Wasserman, Comden, Casselman & Esensten of Tarzana, Calif.; Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington; and Initiative Legal Group of Los Angeles.  Los Angeles-based Arias Ozzello & Gignac, which originally sought $250,000, did not submit a renewed fee request.

Toyota had pushed for Real to stick to his original award amount, challenging the billing records submitted as “contradictory and unreliable” and “rife with evidence of inefficiency, duplication and make-work.”

NALFA also reported on this case in “Ninth Circuit Tosses Fee Award in Prius Litigation”