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Category: USCOFC

Second $185M Attorney Fee Request Called ‘Indefensible’

March 6, 2024

A recent Law 360 story by Jack Karp, “Quinn Emanuel’s 2nd $185M Fee Bid Blasted as ‘Indefensible’”, reports that Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP's second attempt to win $185 million in attorney fees in $3.7 billion litigation over the Affordable Care Act still fails to justify the "indefensible" amount and barely pays "lip service" to a reevaluation ordered by the Federal Circuit, health insurers told the federal claims court.

The Federal Circuit already wiped out the $185 million attorney fee that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims awarded to Quinn Emanuel and directed the claims court to reexamine objecting class members' insistence that the firm hadn't justified its fee request, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. said.

"Despite this clear direction, class counsel's second petition again fails to justify its lodestar and again seeks to avoid a lodestar cross-check.  It instead asks the court to rubberstamp the same $185 million award," the health insurers said in their opposition to the firm's latest motion for approval of its fee request.

That motion for approval fails to support the 10,000 hours Quinn Emanuel says it spent on the case, suggests that the firm double-counted hours by including time spent on a separate multibillion-dollar class, and tries to skew its rates higher by seeking 2023 rates, even though its first fee petition was filed in 2020, according to the insurers.

"Trying to reverse-engineer defenses for its indefensible fee demand, class counsel uses inflated and unproven hours, multiplies those alleged hours by unprecedented rates, and then proposes a multiplier that is miles outside accepted norms.  That is akin to applying no cross-check at all," the insurers said.

Quinn Emanuel and a group of healthcare plan insurers the firm represents have insisted the firm used a novel claim and achieved a 100% recovery for the class in litigation over so-called risk corridor payments under the ACA.  But objectors Kaiser Foundation, UnitedHealthcare and others have argued that class counsel was entitled to just $8.8 million after a lodestar cross-check.

A Court of Federal Claims judge granted Quinn Emanuel's request for $185 million, or 5% of the total $3.7 billion settlement, in 2021 finding that a lodestar cross-check was unnecessary.  But that conclusion "was legal error," according to the Federal Circuit, which vacated the award in 2023.

That $185 million amount was inconsistent with promises made in class opt-in notices, and the "extraordinarily high award" wasn't justified, the three-judge panel ruled, ordering the fees to be recalculated.  But Quinn Emanuel's renewed request for $185 million "does little more than pay lip service" to the Federal Circuit's order, according to the insurers.

While the insurers still think their original $8.8 million fee request is reasonable, they are willing to agree to a fee award between $11.77 million and $23.14 million in "the interest of finality," they told the claims court.  "[T]he objectors sincerely want class counsel to be handsomely rewarded.  $11.77 [million] to $23.14 million represents an incredibly large fee award that also fulfills class counsel's promise of a lodestar cross-check," the insurers said.

Fee Expert Report: Attorney Fee Award Generated $380K in Returns

May 4, 2023

A recent Bloomberg Law by Roy Strom, “Quinn Emanuel Justifies Hugh Fee With $384,000-Per-Hour Return,” reports that Quinn Emanuel has new ammunition in its fight for a $185 million fee award, saying in a filing this week that every hour its lawyers worked on the case generated about $384,000 in returns.  That figure, according to a Harvard Law professor the firm hired to analyze (pdf) the fee award, shows the firm’s work in the Obamacare case was perhaps the most efficient ever performed by attorneys in a large class-action.  Lawyers in 13 similarly sized class action cases generated about $10,000 in returns per hour on average, professor William Rubenstein said.

Does that figure show Quinn Emanuel lawyers were, as Rubenstein argued, “epically productive?”  Or does it prove they’re getting a windfall?  That’s the question the judge overseeing the fee award legal fight, Kathryn Davis, will have to consider.  

The fee fight comes after Quinn Emanuel won nearly $4 billion for health insurers who were stiffed by Congress when it decided not to pay them for selling new, risky policies mandated by Obamacare.  Quinn Emanuel filed the first case taking on the US government, but a separate challenge wound its way all to the Supreme Court, resulting in $12 billion in total payouts.

The firm’s clients won every dollar they sought.  But Quinn Emanuel’s lawyers worked relatively few hours on the case—9,630 hours, to be exact.  It’s the equivalent of fewer than five Big Law attorneys working for one year, hardly a massive undertaking.  In the 13 large class-actions Rubenstein compared to the case, no law firm had worked less than 37,000 hours.

Because Quinn Emanuel’s lawyers worked so few hours to generate such a huge reward, the case has teed up thorny questions about how lawyers’ work should be valued.  Do attorneys just sell their time? Or should courts reward the result lawyers achieve?

In the Quinn Emanuel case, technical considerations have also been in play.  The firm initially received 5% of the $3.7 billion award they won—roughly $185 million.  That’s the figure Quinn Emanuel told clients they’d ask a judge to pay them.  It’s worth noting that a 5% fee on a contingency case is significantly lower than the 33% or 40% lawyers often charge.  But that fee got tossed when some of the health insurers appealed to the Federal Circuit.  They argued Quinn Emanuel should be paid around $9 million.  The appeals court noted Quinn Emanuel told clients its award figure would be subject to a “lodestar crosscheck.”  The Federal Circuit said that hadn’t been done and sent the case back to Judge Davis to consider that analysis.

This is how Quinn Emanuel described a lodestar crosscheck to its clients: “a limitation on class counsel fees based on the number of hours actually worked on the case.”  The lodestar method applies a multiplier to the attorneys’ hourly bill as a reward for success.  It’s usually about 1.5 to 3 times the total bill in successful cases.  If Quinn Emanuel was charging its standard hourly rates, it says its lawyers would have been paid about $9.7 million for their work on the case.  That means the firm is seeking a multiplier of around 19. (Rubenstein says the lodestar is closer to 10 when applying the firm’s newer, higher hourly rates.)

Just like the $384,000 in value-generated-per-hour, a lodestar multiplier of 19 is a serious outlier.  All of this makes the judge’s task a difficult one.  Davis must decide whether to reward the firm for its most-efficient result, or compensate it for the relatively little time case took.

How We Got Here

These outlandish fee award figures made me wonder: What happened to create such a unique case?  Rubenstein’s $384,000 figure doesn’t just tell us something about the lawyers and the result they achieved.  It hints at an underlying fact pattern that must be devastating.  The idea of the “most efficient” litigation in class-action history roughly translates to “the least effort to convince a judge of the most damages.”  What happened that required such little legal work to produce such a huge reward?

The answer can only be described as an unusual and epic failure by Congress.  As the US government careened toward a shutdown in late 2014, Congress cobbled together a massive funding bill to avert disaster.  It included, of all things, a provision that limited the government from appropriating funds to pay subsidies promised to health insurers who participated in an Obamacare program known as “risk corridors.”

The program encouraged insurers to provide new health insurance plans to riskier patients by sharing profits and receiving subsidies from the government. In the end, the government racked up a bill of more than $12 billion.  Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) took credit for the provision, though other Republicans argued they were just as responsible, slamming what he called a “bailout” for insurers.

Quinn Emanuel and Insurers Spar Over $185M in Attorney Fees

April 5, 2023

A recent Law 360 story by Jack Karp, “Quinn Emanuel, Insurers Spar in $185M Fee Fight,reports that Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP balked at what it called insurers' "incendiary" request for an accounting and discovery related to $185 million in attorney fees stemming from a $3.7 billion award secured in litigation over the Affordable Care Act.  The case law Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. cited to justify their requests for an accounting related to the $185 million and discovery regarding judgment preservation insurance taken out by the firm is irrelevant, Quinn Emanuel told the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in a join status report concerning the briefing schedule for its renewed fee application.

The insurers' request "once again relies on aspersions rather than any on-point precedent," the firm said.  "Throwing around the idea of ethical violations having nothing to do with class counsel's representation of the class against the government may be incendiary, but it is not a basis to delay resolution of the renewed fee application."  Quinn Emanuel asked the court to consider just its renewed fee application.  If the court allows the objectors to file any motions, the briefs on those motions should be filed simultaneously "in order to prevent undue delay in resolving this seven-year-old case," the firm said.

"Given the age of this case, class counsel respectfully submits there is no reason to drag this process out unnecessarily, and class counsel still does not understand the antagonism the United/Kaiser objectors are bringing to a process involving fees for claims that class counsel originated, pursued to a 100% result for United and Kaiser, and has continued to pursue doggedly for all remaining class members through the present," it said.  The two insurers were equally heated in their own portion of the joint status report.

Quinn Emanuel's proposal that the court order simultaneous briefing on the objectors' motion for discovery and accounting and Quinn Emanuel's motion for fees is inappropriate and would deprive the insurers of the information they need to file their opposition to the fees, they said in response.  "In effect, by insisting on simultaneous briefing, Quinn Emanuel seeks to moot the objectors' motion for discovery," they said.  The class has a right and the court has a duty to know if the accounting they request would demonstrate any ethical violations, the insurers added.

"Quinn Emanuel calls this argument 'incendiary' but does not deny that it is refusing to provide an accounting contrary to its obligations under Rules of Professional Conduct," they said.  In January, the Federal Circuit wiped out the $185 million in attorney fees awarded to Quinn Emanuel by the federal claims court following heated oral arguments in which an attorney for the firm was scolded for being "aggressive."

Quinn Emanuel and a group of health care plan insurers it represents had urged the Federal Circuit to affirm the fee award, insisting the firm had used a novel claim and achieved a 100% recovery for the class in litigation over so-called risk corridor payments under the ACA.  But Kaiser, UnitedHealthcare and others argued that class counsel was entitled to just $8.8 million after a lodestar cross-check.

Quinn Emanuel had originally promised in a supplemental class notice to limit its fee request based on the hours it worked on the litigation — the lodestar cross-check — and said its fee could be "substantially less than 5%" of the recovery, according to the Federal Circuit's January ruling.  But a Court of Federal Claims judge granted Quinn Emanuel's request for $185 million, or 5% of the total $3.7 billion settlement, finding that a lodestar cross-check was unnecessary.  That conclusion "was legal error," the Federal Circuit ruled.

"We are proud of our work in this case and of the unprecedented $3.7 billion award we obtained for qualified health plan providers, including Shepherd Mullin's clients," Quinn Emanuel partner Adam Wolfson told Law360 in a statement.  "When Quinn Emanuel won this case, we made certain the class administrator paid out 95% of the risk corridors claims to the plaintiffs as soon as possible.  We believe that the fee agreement the class members agreed to when we began our work on the case should stand," he said.  "Should the court come to a different conclusion, we will pay back any ordered amounts to the class administrator, who will then distribute those funds to the entire class."

Feds Ordered to Pay Attorney Fees to Reimburse NY Hospital

August 18, 2022

A recent Law 360 story by Anna Scott Farrell, “Gov’t Ordered To Reimburse NY Hospital $1.7M in Legal Fees” reports that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the government to reimburse NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital $1.7 million in attorney fees for defending itself against doctors who claimed their payroll taxes were wrongly withheld and eventually settled.  The court's decision answered "a unique question of law" about whether a statute requiring the government to reimburse employers for payroll-tax claims extends to the employer's cost to litigate or negotiate such claims, according to the decision published.  "The short answer is that it does," the court said.

At the center of the decision was a textual parsing of Section 3102(b) of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires the government to indemnify employers against claims for taxes withheld under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act.  The law, as written by Congress, reads, "Every employer required so to deduct the tax shall be liable for the payment of such tax, and shall be indemnified against the claims and demands of any person for the amount of any such payment made by such employer."

The court disagreed with the government's position that the phrasing of "any such payment" should apply in a limited context to the payment for "claims and demands" made by the employer. It sided with the hospital's "most natural reading," which included the last part of the sentence — that the payment should apply to "any such payment made by such employer."  Further, the court said, "the plain meaning of 'indemnified' clearly encompasses attorneys' fees and costs."

The decision is a mile marker in a long battle that started in 2013, when three doctors who had worked as residents at the hospital blamed the hospital for the loss of tens of thousands of dollars in FICA payroll taxes on their wages when they were trainees.  The Internal Revenue Service had recently given the trainees a window of time to claw back their tax contributions for the years when they were considered students who weren't required to pay those taxes.  In their suit against the hospital, the doctors said it should have helped them recover the wages in time by filing protective FICA tax refund claims on their behalf, according to court filings.

The hospital settled with the residents in 2015, agreeing to pay them $4.5 million toward their lost wages plus their attorney's fees, bringing the total settlement amount to $6.6 million.  A year after the settlement, the hospital sued the IRS, seeking reimbursement of the $6.6 million it had paid the residents.  The Court of Federal Claims initially rejected the hospital's bid for reimbursement, but a three-member panel on the Federal Circuit overturned that ruling, saying the hospital was entitled to reimbursement from the government.

Quinn Emanuel Gets $185M in Attorney Fees in $3.7B ACA Win

September 16, 2021

A recent Law 360 story by Dave Simpson, “Quinn Emanuel Gets $185M Fee From $3.7B Win in ACA Suits,” reports that a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge granted Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP's request for $185 million in fees stemming from two class actions against the federal government over so-called risk corridor payments under the Affordable Care Act, which resulted in a nearly $3.7 billion total win.  Judge Kathryn C. Davis said that despite the "at times hyperbolic" motions for fees, the law firm did show "foresight" in focusing on a successful legal theory months before other parties jumped on that bandwagon.  She granted its request for 5% of the winnings.

"At the end of the day, what is more important is that class counsel's legal theory resulted in a huge award to the classes here," Judge Davis said.  Quinn Emanuel was the first firm in the country to file a lawsuit on behalf of a qualified health plan insurer accusing the federal government of unlawfully reneging on a commitment to shield ACA insurers from heavy financial losses.

Health Republic Insurance Co. sued the government in 2016 and in July 2020 won a judgment for $1.9 billion alongside a subclass of insurers.  Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative sued the government in 2017 over similar claims and won a $1.7 billion judgment.  Those cases set off a firestorm of parallel litigation across the country, alleging similar claims.  Two of those cases ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court.  In April 2020, the justices reversed Congress' denial of $12 billion in "risk corridor" funding, which the ACA dangled as an incentive for insurers during the law's first three years of operation.

While Quinn Emanuel didn't work on those cases directly, the firm argued in its request for fees in July 2020 that the Supreme Court "adopted the exact legal theory Quinn Emanuel set forth in the initial Health Republic complaint and which it advocated at every step."  But in August 2020, objectors like Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. and others argued that class counsel was entitled to just $8.8 million after a lodestar cross-check.

They said that Quinn Emanuel had little to do with the litigation that ended up at the Supreme Court, and argued that the firm was trying to walk away with an award that would work out to an hourly rate of $18,000 per attorney.  Class members signed on to the suit with a guarantee that the proposed 5% fee award would be subject to a lodestar cross-check, the motion said, which the firm had eschewed.

Quinn Emanuel shot back in September 2020 that the $8.8 million award proposed would discourage attorneys in the future from taking on similarly ambitious cases.  The percentage model, which the insurers agreed to when choosing to join the class instead of pursuing individual claims, is favored by the courts for exactly this reason, the firm said.  According to the firm, despite the dozens of companies signing on to the fee objection, most of them Kaiser or United entities, almost 90% of the class members have not objected.

Judge Davis sided with the firm.  "These are not cases in which class counsel merely rode the coattails of other innovative litigators," she said.  The 5% fee is well below market value, and the objectors propose what would amount to a .22% fee, she said.  Further, the firm allocated 10,000 billable hours and might not have been paid for any of it had the outcome gone differently, the judge said.