A recent Law 360 story by Ryan Boysen, “First Shots Fired in Seeger Weiss Concussion Fee Appeal,” reports that Seeger Weiss LLP has “hoarded” nearly $65 million for its work on the landmark NFL concussion settlement while punishing rival firms by docking their pay over perceived slights, all through an “improper process” that “lacked transparency and basic mechanisms of fairness,” according to the opening briefs in a contentious Third Circuit appeal.
The appeal was filed over a year ago, challenging an order by U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody that created a $112.5 million common benefit fund to pay the 24 firms involved in bringing to fruition the uncapped concussion settlement, which has paid out nearly $660 million in claims since it was approved in 2015. In opening briefs filed, two groups of law firms and retired football players led by Locks Law Firm and Lubel Voyles LLP took aim at Seeger Weiss’ role in divvying up that money.
The firms argued that Judge Brody essentially gave Chris Seeger carte blanche to award himself and other firms whatever he pleased, then rubber-stamped his decisions with hardly any oversight, violating constitutional due process obligations and binding precedent in the process. Adding insult to injury, Locks Law said, all of the firms involved in the settlement were required to submit time records to Seeger while he determined their final awards, but to this day no other firm “has seen Mr. Seeger’s records” and “neither will this court: those records were never made part of the record below.”
“The court empowered Mr. Seeger … to reward himself and penalize rivals without any on-the-record scrutiny of his own time records,” Locks Law said. “The court accepted Mr. Seeger’s [determinations] with only minor adjustments.” “There is no justification for this manifestly inadequate process,” Locks Law added.
While ostensibly separate, the allegations in the briefs mirror complaints about the settlement as a whole, which many attorneys claim has been marred by a lack of transparency and a seeming willingness on Judge Brody’s behalf to improvise when deciding issues of considerable importance to the class of 20,000 retired players suffering from concussion-related brain damage the deal is meant to compensate.
The briefs also underscore the bad blood that’s been building up for years between Seeger and many of the other lawyers involved in the case. To take just one example, Locks Law was terminated as class counsel alongside five other firms in May, a move many viewed as retaliation for its request that Judge Brody reconsider new medical guidelines that Locks Law had argued would make it harder for players to get paid. Prior to that, Locks Law butted heads with Seeger directly when it sought to take over the implementation of the deal, arguing that Seeger was letting the NFL steamroll the players with “scorched earth” legal tactics. Both of those motions were denied.
In a nod to those broader tensions, Lubel Voyles acknowledged in its brief that while “fee fights in class action litigation are, sadly, not rare,” it is rare “for the optics of a common benefit fee award to be so poor that even class counsel are divided on every aspect of the award, not just allocation of the money.” Locks Law said that before Judge Brody made a decision on how to apportion the $112.5 million CBF, some firms recommended a special master be appointed for that purpose while Locks Law itself urged the creation of a committee.
Instead, Locks Law said, Judge Brody let Seeger make “the sole determinations of what work performed by other [leading firms] qualified for common benefit compensation in his petition.” “The district court’s decision to delegate responsibility for that allocation to the largest recipient of those fees, co-lead counsel Christopher Seeger,” was an “improper process,” Locks Law said.
Locks Law said all of the firms applying for those fees had to submit their time sheets to Seeger for him to review, but Seeger’s own records were only ever reviewed in camera by Judge Brody. After approving more hours for his firm than any other, and awarding a higher lodestar multiple — a common calculation used by law firms to determine fees in many instances — for those hours than to any other firm, Seeger ultimately received about $52 million of the initial $85 million payout from the fund. His firm has since received $8 million more, and is waiting on Judge Brody to approve more than $4 million on top of that, for a total of nearly $65 million.
Meanwhile, Locks Law has received less than $5 million in common benefit fees thus far, despite representing more than 1,000 players in the litigation compared to Seeger’s 20-or-so clients, a common point of contention raised by many other lawyers involved in the case. Locks Law says Seeger seized on an interview Gene Locks gave to Bloomberg Businessweek for a 2013 article that “infuriated the NFL” as a reason to justify the low lodestar multiple given to Locks Law, but in its brief the firm said that explanation was “not credible.”
Lance Lubel of Lubel Voyles claims he was cut out of the CBF fees entirely because he objected to the settlement, something he's done frequently, even though his earlier complaints about the deal’s language led to significant safeguards being put in place to protect retired players. Lubel echoed many of Locks Laws’ concerns with Seeger’s role in the CBF distribution, but went one step further by also challenging a 5% holdback that’s currently applied to each successful monetary award and a 22% fee cap Judge Brody imposed on attorneys representing retired players.
The 5% holdback is being set aside, and Judge Brody has said she’ll rule at a later date on whether or not to tap those funds to continue paying CBF fees for the implementation of the 65-year-long program, money that would presumably only be available to Seeger after Judge Brody axed the other class counsel firms in May. Lubel said the $112.5 million should be enough money to compensate the lead firms over the entire course of the settlement’s lifespan.
As to the 22% cap on attorney fees, which works out to 17% after the holdback is applied, Lubel said Judge Brody “has, in the spirit of helping class members, gutted their chances of qualifying for an award through the claims process.” That’s because many retired players require expensive medical tests before they can qualify for an award, and the price of those exams can easily reach $10,000 or more. For various reasons, a player’s attorney is often the only party willing and able to front those funds, Lubel said. But artificially capping their fees at a relatively low 17% rate makes them less willing to spend that money to get the ball rolling on a client’s claim, he continued.
The case is In re: National Football Players' Concussion Injury Litigation, case number 18-2012, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.