A recent Law 360 story by Dave Simpson, “Attys Seek $66M Fee in $160M Capacitor Maker Antitrust Deal" reports that attorneys for a class of direct purchasers of capacitors asked a California federal court to approve $66 million in fees as a part of a proposed settlement in which Nippon Chemi-Con and its U.S. subsidiary would pay $160 million to end antitrust claims.

While the fee request amounts to 40% of the settlement fund, the attorneys noted that the newest proposed settlement would bring the overall recovery in the case to more than $604 million, and the newest fee request would bring total attorneys' fees to more than $187 million.  When taken in totality, and if approved, attorneys would recover a bit over 31% of all the proposed settlements in the case, the attorneys noted.

The motion also notes that, in the Ninth Circuit, the benchmark for percentage of recovery awards is 25% of the total settlement award, which can be adjusted up or down.  "The complexity of this case, the significant benefits achieved for the class and the excellent work performed support an upwards adjustment," the direct pursers said .

This latest deal was struck in December, just before closing arguments in a federal trial, by a class of about 1,800 U.S. companies with Japan-based Nippon Chemi-Con Corp. and its U.S. subsidiary United Chemi-Con.  It ended a weekslong jury trial over claims that more than 20 capacitor manufacturers carried out a price-fixing conspiracy from 2002 to 2014 and owed refunds of $427 million.  The litigation dates back to July 2014, when Chip-Tech Ltd. filed the first suit in the consolidated case.

When the parties informed the court that they had reached a settlement, Judge Donato — who has overseen the case for about seven years — told them that, by this point, he had heard most of the evidence and had his own sense of what constitutes an appropriate settlement amount.  "I'm advising you," Judge Donato said, "that if the settlement is too low, it will not be approved."  "I'll tell you $5 million is not going to fly," the judge added, referring to the deal Matsuo struck to settle out of the case midway through the trial.

The attorneys touted the overall recovery as greater than the total alleged overcharges.  "This is a large amount of money relative to the settling defendants' individual and collective capacitor sales to class members between 2002 and 2014 and is over 141.4% of the total overcharges ($427,530,613) as calculated by the class's expert — an extraordinary result," the attorneys said.  "Courts have approved equal or higher upward adjustments from the benchmark in cases where the settlement was a much lesser percentage of single damages."