A recent Law 360 story by Celeste Bott, “7^th Circ. Scraps $57M Chicken Price-Fixing Atty Fee”, reports that the Seventh Circuit threw out a $57 million attorney fee award in a $181 million deal for chicken buyers in sprawling antitrust litigation, saying that the district court failed to consider bids made by class counsel in auctions in other cases and fee awards in different circuits.  Objector John Andren had taken issue with the roughly one-third cut of the settlement that Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC were to receive in a deal the firms had struck with Fieldale Farms, Peco Foods, George's, Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride and Mar-Jac Poultry in the sprawling antitrust case.

A three-judge Seventh Circuit panel complimented the lower court for its "fine job of shepherding" the complex litigation, but said it made a mistake when it discounted bids made by one of the two firms serving as class counsel in other cases because the proposals had declining fee scale award structures.  The published opinion concluded that "it was error to suggest that this court has cast doubt on the consideration of declining fee scale bids in all cases."

"In the district court's view, this court has explained that these awards do not reflect market realities and impose a perverse incentive insofar as they ensure that attorneys' opportunity cost will exceed the benefits of seeking a larger recovery, even when the client would otherwise benefit," the panel said.  "Yet, this court has never categorically rejected consideration of bids with declining fee scale award structures.  Rather, the nature of the typical costs in litigation must be assessed in determining whether counsel and plaintiffs would have bargained ex ante for such a structure."

The Seventh Circuit has observed that such a fee structure, where the amount being awarded in fees goes down as the settlement amount goes up, can present certain advantages, and the appellate court took that approach in another case — In re: Synthroid Marketing Litigation — which was a class action suit against the manufacturer of a synthetic thyroid drug.

"Fees do not always decline for securing a larger recovery, and in those instances, counsel will have an incentive to seek more," the panel said.  "Accordingly, the appropriateness of a declining fee scale award structure may depend on the particulars of the case.  It was an abuse of discretion to rule that bids with declining fee structures should categorically be given little weight in assessing fees."

Andren had also argued that the lower court should have taken into account that class counsel frequently did work in Ninth Circuit district courts, which employ a lower 25% "benchmark" for presumptively reasonable attorney fees.  The appellate panel agreed that the district judge shouldn't have categorically assigned less weight to Ninth Circuit cases in which counsel was awarded fees under a mega-fund rule.

"It is true that this court has rejected the application of a mega-fund rule.  Yet, continued participation in litigation in the Ninth Circuit is an economic choice that informs the price of class counsel's legal services and the bargain they may have struck," the panel said.  "The district court should have considered where class counsel's economic behavior falls on this spectrum and assigned appropriate weight to fees awarded in out-of-circuit litigation."

In addition to vacating the fee award, the panel remanded the matter for "greater explanation and consideration" of the factors it laid out, noting that it expressed no preference as to the amount or structure of the award, just the need for further review.

A recent Law 360 story by Carolyn Muyskens, “Mich. Blasts $5M Fee Ask in Flint Water Case as ‘Overreach’”, reports that the state of Michigan is urging the judge presiding over Flint water crisis litigation to deny residents' request for $5 million in settlement funds to be set aside for the future litigation expenses, with the state saying the settlement "was never intended to be a litigation fund for plaintiffs' counsel."  In a filing, the state opposed plaintiffs' requests for fee distributions from the $626 million settlement, which resolved claims against the state government and the city of Flint for their roles in the disaster set off when the city, under a state-appointed manager, changed its water source to save money.

The state said attorneys' new batch of fee requests, which follows their first payout from the settlement fund, were either premature or not authorized by the agreement.  Class counsel and liaison attorneys got the first payment from the settlement fund approved in May, when U.S. District Judge Judith E. Levy ordered a distribution of $40 million as a common benefit award to the attorneys, with an additional $7 million for litigation expenses.  Although the settlement was approved in November 2021, appeals have held up distribution of the funds until recently.

In June, the attorneys filed a motion for additional fees and expenses. The motion seeks reimbursement for post-settlement litigation expenses, a $5 million fund for future litigation expenses, and interest that had accumulated on the $47 million already disbursed — as well as on any awards moving forward.  It also seeks the disbursement of an already-approved fee award of 10% of the programmatic relief fund, which is a subcategory of money to be used for special education services for school children exposed to lead.

The state blasted the request, calling it an "egregious overreach" and saying settlement dollars should not be put toward the plaintiffs' litigation against the remaining defendants in the case — Veolia North America and Lockwood Andrews & Newnam PC. LAN said last week it had reached a tentative settlement with the plaintiffs.  The settlement is "not a litigation fund for plaintiffs' counsel's expenses pursuing non-settling defendants," the state said.

In its motion seeking expenses incurred since February 2021 and the $5 million fund, the residents said the settlement agreement stated plaintiffs' counsel "shall be reimbursed and paid solely out of the FWC qualified settlement fund for all expenses and fees, including but not limited to: attorneys' fees [and] past, current or future litigation and administration expenses," highlighting that the deal explicitly provided for future expenses.

The plaintiffs cited an Eastern District of Michigan case, In re Packaged Ice Antitrust Litig., in which the court "authorized class counsel to utilize up to $750,000 of the settlement fund to pay expenses incurred in the litigation going forward, including 'in prosecuting the claims against the remaining non-settling defendants.'"  The Flint plaintiffs said the judge would have oversight to approve any disbursements from the $5 million fund and that any money leftover that wasn't used for litigation expenses would revert to the settlement fund.

"Plaintiffs' counsel have incurred millions in additional lodestar in continuing to prosecute this case but are not presently seeking any additional award of attorneys' fees, nor requesting a disbursement related to future reasonable litigation expenses," the lawyers said.  "When additional common benefit expenses are incurred and become known, and in consultation with the special master, plaintiffs' counsel may make further applications for disbursements from the $5 million portion of the FWC qualified settlement fund requested herein to be set aside for continuing reasonable litigation expenses," they added.

The state also opposed the request for a 10% fee award from the special education services fund, arguing it can't be calculated until the claims administrator finalizes the list of claimants and the value of the main qualified settlement fund is determined.

The state also said the attorneys aren't entitled to interest on their fee awards, pointing to a provision in the settlement agreement that "requires that all interest earned by the FWC qualified settlement fund or the sub-qualified settlement funds become and remain part of each such fund and may be used to pay any fees and expenses incurred to implement this settlement agreement."

The state argued this provision means interest that accrues in the settlement fund should be put toward the costs of the administration process, not attorneys.  "If any interest remains after implementation of the settlement is complete, then those funds should enure to the benefit of the claimaints," the state argued.  Lawyers for the class are ultimately expected to receive about $200 million for their work on the case.

A recent Law360 story by Rick Archer, “GM Ignition MDL Firms Get OK for Another $10.8M in Fees,” reports that counsel for plaintiffs in the General Motors multidistrict ignition switch litigation will be receiving an additional $10.8 million after telling a New York federal judge that a $34 million fee award earlier this year left them not even close to fully reimbursed.  U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman signed the order authorizing the payments in response to a motion from the MDL's three co-lead firms – Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Hilliard Martinez Gonzales LLP, and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP – requesting unused funds from an MDL legal expenses pool be used to supplement the earlier fees and expenses reward.

"To reiterate, even with these reimbursements, co-lead counsel, like participating counsel, will not have recovered anything close to their lodestar," they said in their motion.  In May, Judge Furman approved the payment of $34 million in fees and expenses to 53 firms involved in the case, but earlier this month the three co-leads said in a motion that the payments did not fully cover their share of the case's lodestar and that some participating firms had received no funds from the order.

The firms proposed and Judge Furman agreed that they be paid out of unused cash in the "common benefit order fund" established among the MDL participants to pool the proceeds of individual personal injury settlements from ignition switch cases and use them to reimburse work done for the common benefit of all the MDL plaintiffs.  "At present, co-lead counsel do not anticipate substantial future payments into the CBF, and therefore seek compensation at this time for their firms and participating counsel firms for the many thousands of hours dedicated to this litigation over the last seven years," they said.

Just under $9.2 million of the payments are slated for the lead firms.  The remaining funds will be split between 16 additional firms, in amounts ranging from more than $603,000 to $61.43.  In his order, Judge Furman said the firms had "far more" than this amount in unreimbursed fees.

A recent Law 360 article by Charles Agee, “5 Reasons Lawyers Often Fail To Secure Litigation Funding,” reports on litigation funding.  This article was posted with permission.  The article reads:

It's no secret that parties seeking litigation funding face steep odds in securing a deal.  How steep?  According to my firm's research, more than 95% of commercial litigation funding deals presented to any particular funder never advance to closing.  Experience tells me one of the overarching reasons the litigation finance deal closure rate is so low is that lawyers and their clients drastically underestimate the challenges and nuances of obtaining this specialized form of financing.

For many, the downside of trying and failing to secure funding is simply that — not obtaining the funding.  So why not approach a few funders and see if one bites?  On the surface, this approach has appeal; in reality, it is fraught with hidden costs.  The litigation fundraising process can be extremely laborious, and the time sunk into an unsuccessful deal typically is not billable.  Each year, leading law firms squander millions of dollars in time alone seeking funding for deals that do not bear fruit.

Even more concerning, lawyers who are unsuccessful in obtaining funding for their clients almost always damage their credibility with the client.  The good news is that these challenges can be anticipated and, in many instances, overcome.  To overcome those challenges, however, it is important to also examine why so many parties fail to obtain litigation funding. Here are the top five reasons why.

1. Misunderstanding the Funders' Acceptance Standards

Funders reject the lion's share of deals that they are shown because most of them should never have been brought to the market in the first place.  My colleagues and I have seen that far too many lawyers and clients present litigation opportunities that make no sense to pursue, regardless of who is funding the case.  Nothing can be done to change the substance of the underlying matter, and short of committing fraud, you are not going to sneak into a funder's vault with a meritless deal.

The best — and only — advice for these weak opportunities is to avoid the litigation fundraising process altogether.  But we also see that funders also reject a significant number of matters that are meritorious and economically viable enough for experienced litigation counsel to be willing to risk their own legal fees on a successful outcome.

Why are these opportunities declined?  The reason — and it may not be a satisfactory one — is that a litigation funder's diligence process and investment criteria are generally more rigorous than that of most law firms.  Unless a lawyer has a great deal of experience with funding, this disparity can be jarring and more than a little ego-bruising, especially when clients or colleagues are watching.

To appreciate why the litigation funders' bar is set so high, it is helpful to consider the investment proposition from their perspective.  The funder must develop a high degree of confidence in a financially successful outcome of a legal dispute — usually involving complex subject matter — because it will only receive an investment return if the underlying matter resolves favorably.

As a purely passive investor, the funder also must structure the deal in a way that achieves alignment with both counsel and client, and often the economics of even the strongest of cases are insufficient to do so.  Further, unlike a venture capital fund that can accept high levels of losses because of their upside in successful investments, litigation funders' more modest returns are too low to subsidize VC-level loss rates.

Because most litigation funders are relatively new and have not yet established substantial track records, this dynamic fosters a stronger bias toward risk aversion within the industry.  A litigation funder's diligence process is designed to find reasons not to invest in an opportunity. It also tends to follow a leave-no-stone-unturned approach, which can be exhausting for the party seeking funding.  However, even the most discriminating funders' processes can be successfully navigated with proper preparation and analysis before approaching the funder.

What are the main challenges counsel will face in the litigation, and how will these be overcome? What is counsel's track record in similar matters? What level of financial risk is counsel prepared to assume?  These are just a few of the questions that parties should consider before approaching funders. Lawyers and their clients are well-served to anticipate these and other questions that a skeptical investor might ask, and be prepared with clear and thoughtful responses.

2. Failing to Approach the Most Suitable Funders for the Opportunity

Parties seeking funding often fail to approach the funders most likely to invest in their claim.  There are currently 46 active commercial litigation funders in the U.S., each with different funding criteria, risk appetites, structuring preferences and return profiles.  Most parties seeking funding only present their opportunity to a few of these funders. This is a mistake, because even the largest funders in the world are not configured to accommodate every potential type of deal.

Without adequate knowledge of the market, it is difficult to know which funders are most suitable for a particular deal. It is critical to know what a funder's investment criteria are, including preferred deal size, type of litigation, jurisdictions and stage of litigation, among others.  Too often, parties meet resistance from funders that were never a good fit for the opportunity and elect to abandon the fundraising process altogether.  If they had only identified the right audience, they might have been able to secure funding.

3. Inadequately Packaging the Presentation of the Opportunity

First impressions matter, especially in litigation finance.  Our conversations with funders inform that the largest litigation funding firms see more than 1,000 opportunities a year and don't have the bandwidth to wade through poorly packaged opportunities.  Still, parties often fail to spend the time necessary to appropriately present an opportunity. The failure to properly present an opportunity often is the difference between a yes and a no.

What are the most common deficiencies in litigation fundraising presentations?  Most lawyers are more than capable of presenting the legal merits of an opportunity; however, we have observed time and again that they tend to fall short in demonstrating a thorough approach to the economics, i.e., the damages model and the budget.  Lawyers and clients may also downplay or omit entirely a case's potential challenges, whereas a funder expects these downsides to be soberly acknowledged and addressed.

Another similar mistake is to leave too many analytical black boxes in the presentation, such as factual questions that could be investigated now but are proposed to be left for discovery, or assumptions underlying the damages model that have not been rigorously researched.  The negative impression left by these and many other deficiencies is difficult to overcome.  Parties seeking funding should prepare a thoughtful and complete presentation of their financing opportunities.

4. Lacking Awareness of Norms That Guide Negotiations With Funders

A common misconception is that litigation funding deals are easy to negotiate and that funding agreements are relatively uniform.  In reality, these deals have several peculiarities and are governed by particular legal and ethical parameters.  Even parties with experience in other types of financing or business dealings struggle to extend their acumen to litigation financing deals.

Indeed, the process is guided by certain industry norms that outsiders may not necessarily appreciate or even be aware of. Parties that neglect to understand these nuances run a considerable risk of derailing the litigation fundraising process, sometimes after many months have been spent.  Each funder approaches the investment diligence and documentation processes differently.

For instance, some will provide parties a term sheet and, after the term sheet is executed, proceed to deeper diligence and final deal documents.  Other funders might have a three-phase negotiation process where the party is expected to execute a term sheet, a letter of intent and then a litigation funding agreement. Parties should be prepared to negotiate with the funder at each phase of the process.

Prior to closing, the last document to be negotiated is the definitive litigation funding agreement, or similarly named instrument.  While no two funding agreements are identical, most agreements have certain types of provisions that are essential to the funder, given the contingent-repayment, no-control nature of the investment.  Parties seeking funding should understand that these types of provisions are nonnegotiable and that pressing too hard can sour an otherwise fruitful closing process.

5. Prematurely Agreeing to Exclusivity With a Funder

Perhaps the most critical decision in the litigation fundraising process involves granting exclusivity to a funder.  Once a term sheet has been negotiated, a funder will nearly always require a period of exclusivity — sometimes more than 60 days — to complete its diligence and documentation of the transaction. After granting exclusivity, you are largely at the funder's mercy.

Parties seeking funding almost universally misread the significance of obtaining a term sheet from a funder, mistakenly believing that the probability of closing is far higher than it actually is.  Depending on the funder and the extent of its preliminary due diligence, the term sheet can merely be a hope certificate describing what a transaction might look like. Terms may be retraded or, as is often the case, the funder declines to proceed with the deal following a deeper dive into the opportunity.

Selecting the wrong funder for exclusivity may also hamper a party's future prospects of securing a deal with another funder, if negotiations with the original funder stall.  Funders will often assume that the deal with the original funder stalled because of a fatal flaw in the deal.

In an industry that is already risk-averse by nature, this kind of red flag in the middle of a fundraising process is extraordinarily difficult to overcome.  The key to avoiding this mistake — aside from refusing to grant exclusivity — is to understand the approach, process and track record of any funder requesting exclusivity.

The party seeking funding should also assess the extent of the funder's preliminary diligence and the degree to which the funder grasps the key issues.  Of course, ensuring that all material facts have been disclosed to the funder prior to exclusivity also helps avoid surprises. But candor may not be enough to avoid this pitfall.  Exclusivity is a necessary evil in the litigation finance industry — for now — and parties seeking funding should be extremely judicious in granting it.

Conclusion

While securing litigation funding may seem daunting, there are ways to beat those odds and maximize the chances of securing funding.  Parties that approach the market in a thoughtful and informed manner have a much higher likelihood of success and of avoiding wasteful dead ends.  As the market continues to mature, funders should innovate and improve their processes to make the experience more predictable and user-friendly.  Until then, experience in the market and knowledge of the funders and their approaches will remain the key to improving the odds of obtaining litigation financing.

Charles Agee is managing partner at Westfleet Advisors.

A recent Law 360 story by Mike Curley, “Atty Fees Capped at 15% in $26B Opioid MDL Settlement”, reports that an Ohio federal judge has capped contingent attorney fees in a $26 billion settlement in the sprawling opioid multidistrict litigation at 15%, saying the cap is necessary to ensure more money goes to the plaintiffs for addressing the harm opioids have done and to keep fees from being unreasonable.  U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster capped the fees for individually retained plaintiff's attorneys, or IRPAs, in the suit, including both those whose cases are already in the MDL and those who opt-in to the settlement without having participated up to now.

According to the order, the $26 billion settlement reached in July already sets aside $2.3 billion, or about 8.8%, of its fund for attorney fees, and all the attorneys in the plaintiffs executive committee have agreed to waive their contingency contracts to take their fees from that fee fund.  In addition, the deal stipulates that in no event must less than 85% of the funds be spent on opioid remediation, the judge wrote, so the hard cap is already built into the settlement.  In order to collect from the attorney fee fund, IRPAs must submit an application and waive the right to enforce their own contingent fee contracts, the judge wrote.  And even if they forgo payment from the attorney fee fund, the amount they can collect on their contingent contracts is still capped at 15%, the judge wrote.

The deal with J&J, AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. ends the bulk of the suits levied over the opioid crisis. Up to $5 billion will come from J&J over the next nine years and $21 billion from the distributors over the next 18 years, with up to $23.5 billion of the total going toward easing the opioid epidemic, according to the deal.  Under the terms of the deal, J&J agreed to stop its opioid sales, according to a statement from the New York Attorney General's Office.  The drug distributors also agreed to share data about opioid shipments with an independent monitor.  New York was joined by the state attorneys general for California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas in negotiating the deal.

The 15% cap represents a consensus following significant deliberation and negotiations among the parties, Judge Polster wrote Friday, and the fact that attorneys must waive their contingent contracts to collect from the fee fund will prevent the plaintiff entities from having to effectively pay their attorneys twice, and keep the amount each attorney receives fair and equitable.  Given the scale of the settlement, which Judge Polster said was among the largest in the nation's history, the lower percentage will keep the fees from growing beyond what is reasonable, adding that a disproportionately large fee could erode faith in the legal system.

Finally, the judge noted that some attorneys may well have performed extraordinary work on behalf of their clients far beyond the norm in the opioid MDL, and in those rare cases, the court will allow an IRPA who forgoes the fee fund to enforce a fee contract at higher than 15%, provided they present evidence of the exceptional work and extraordinary risk they went through in the case.  "We understand the court was faced with a difficult situation here and reached a Solomonic decision to ensure fairness for all the government clients," Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik PLLC, representing plaintiffs in the MDL, told Law360.

Paul Geller of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, also representing plaintiffs in the MDL, said those who worked the hardest on the case are the ones that are going to be alright with the cap.  "If there ever were a case where a lawyer should agree with a well-reasoned fee cap, it's this one," he said.  "There are literally hundreds of lawyers involved in opioid litigation ranging from altruistic to avaricious, and everything in between; one's reaction will largely depend on where you fall on that continuum."  Geller added that the litigation to him has always "had a higher purpose" of addressing the public health crisis

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