A recent Law 360 story by Rachel Scharf, “Attys Win $11M of $38M Deutsche Bank Silver Price-Fix Deal,” reports that lawyers representing a class of silver investors can take an $11.4 million cut of the $38 million deal that Deutsche Bank AG struck in 2016 to exit multidistrict litigation over an alleged price-fixing conspiracy, a New York federal judge said.

After an April 8 fairness hearing, U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni awarded attorneys from Lowey Dannenberg PC and Grant & Eisenhofer PA a 30% slice of the October 2016 settlement they negotiated for investors accusing Deutsche Bank of colluding with other banks to fix the price of silver futures.

Judge Caproni granted the entirety of the attorneys' January fee request, saying the amount checks out, given the lawyers' "skill, perseverance and diligent advocacy" in litigating the case.

"The action involves numerous complex factual and legal issues and was actively litigated and, in the absence of a settlement, would have involved lengthy proceedings with uncertain resolution," the judge said. "The attorneys' fees award is fair, reasonable, appropriate and consistent with the awards in similar cases."

Judge Caproni said it's up to the two firms serving as co-lead counsel to decide how to split up the $11.4 million fee.

While Deutsche Bank's settlement was preliminarily approved in November 2016, the final approval process was delayed until recently due to ongoing discovery.

The consolidated litigation alleges that Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings PLC and Bank of Nova Scotia conspired to fix the price of silver futures to ensure the banks received high returns as part of The London Silver Market Fixing Ltd., which has set the price of physical silver since 1897.

Deutsche Bank is so far the only bank to settle out of the allegations. Investors attempted in December 2016 to use new electronic records they acquired through the settlement as evidence to add five more banks, including Bank of America Corp., Barclays PLC and UBS AG, to the litigation.

But Judge Caproni cut away the new defendants in 2018, saying that "what plaintiffs represented to be a mother lode of evidence of a vast conspiracy turns out to be less than overwhelming."

Judge Caproni is also overseeing another multidistrict litigation alleging that a similar roster of banks illegally conspired to fix the price of gold. Deutsche Bank struck a $60 million deal to exit that case in December 2016, followed by HSBC Bank's own $42 million settlement this past December.