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Class Counsel Win Reduced Attorney Fees of $152M in Antitrust Case

August 30, 2021 | Posted in : Contingency Fees / POF, Expenses / Costs, Fee Allocation / Fee Apportionment, Fee Award, Fee Award Factors, Fee Declaration, Fee Reduction, Fee Request, Historic / Landmark Case, Hours Billled, Practice Area: Class Action / Mass Tort / MDL, Settlement Data / Terms

A recent Reuters story by Mike Scarcella, “Class Lawyers Win Reduced Fee of $152M in Sutter Case,” reports that a California judge has slashed a requested legal fee award in an antitrust settlement with Sutter Health, approving $152.3 million in compensation for class counsel, after concluding the plaintiffs' lawyers had claimed "unreasonably high" hours for their work.  Judge Anne-Christine Massullo of San Francisco Superior Court gave final approval to the $575 million settlement as she awarded fees to five law firms that represented plaintiff labor unions and employers, in an order released.

Sutter Health in 2019 first agreed to the settlement resolving claims that anticompetitive practices led to higher healthcare costs in northern California.  The awarded legal fee marked about 26% of the settlement, in line with compensation in other class actions, Massullo wrote.  Massullo said her award accounted for the "risk presented by this litigation" and also "the novelty and complexity of the issues."  The plaintiffs' lawyers had asked for $172.5 million in fees.

Massullo's order awarded $11.5 million in fees to the California attorney general's office, which sued Sutter in 2018.  The state's complaint was consolidated with the private litigation, which began in 2014.  Massullo said the state attorneys and class lawyers "demonstrated a high level of skill in providing high quality of representation in this case."  Still, the judge raised concerns about the number of hours -- 194,642 -- that class lawyers claimed in their request for fees.  Massullo said the claimed hours compared to "93.6 years of work, or more than 7 years of work for 13 attorneys."

Declarations from plaintiffs' attorneys involved in the case "do not, except at a high level and very generally, permit assessment of the extent to which the five firms that constitute class counsel unreasonably duplicated efforts," Massullo said.  Still, she said she was "satisfied that this litigation was a monumental undertaking" that required a "vast number of hours."