A recent NLJ story, “Judge Stalls Prius Headlight Settlement, Citing ‘Big Problem’ with Fees” reports that a federal judge, citing concerns about a request for attorney fees, has put the breaks on a proposed class action settlement between Toyota Motor Corp. and nearly 300,000 owners and lessees of Prius who claimed that their headlights were defective because they intermittently shut off.  U.S. District Judge Manuel Real, during a final settlement hearing on Aug. 29 in Los Angeles, said he was having a “big problem” going through the fee request, estimated at $4.7 million for five plaintiffs’ firms.  Toyota’s lawyers have maintained in court documents that the amount is too high – particularly since the value of the settlement is less than $4.7 million.

On June 6, San Francisco’s Girard Gibbs submitted a fee request to approve nearly $4.7 million in attorney fees for approximately 6,881 hours of work.  The fee request included $1.9 million to Girard Gibbs; $720,000 to Wasserman, Comden, Casselman & Esensten of Tarzana, Calif.; $250,000 to Los Angeles-based Arias Ozzello & Gignac; $1.2 million to Los Angeles-based Initiative Legal Group; and nearly $600,000 to Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington.

In opposing the fee request, Toyota estimated the total value of the settlement at between $3.3 million and nearly $4.7 million, including the value of extended warranty repairs, according to documents filed on July 8.  Toyota’s attorney Michael Mallow, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Loeb & Loeb, called the fee request “an astounding case of ‘piling on.’”  Mallow maintains that the work should have been performed by only one of the plaintiff law firms for a quarter of the amount claimed by the collective five firms.  He said that a more reasonable fee award, based on 25% of the value of the settlement, would be $1 million to $1.2 million.  Additionally, he said, the fees are unreasonable when compared to what Loeb & Loeb billed Toyota: about $1.5 million for 4,218 hours of work.