A recent BLT Blog story, “DOJ to Oppose $90.8M Fee Request in Class Action” reports that the U.S. Justice Department is planning to oppose the $90.8 million attorney fee request in the black farmers’ loan discrimination case in Washington federal district court.  Justice lawyers said in a recent court filing the government will litigate the plaintiffs’ attorneys assertion that they should receive 7.4% of the $1.25 billion settlement.   The settlement, reached in February 2010, set the fee range between 4.1% and 7.4%.  The deal between the government and farmers resolved claims among people who missed a court-imposed deadline to participate in an earlier settlement that involved discrimination allegations.

The Justice Department has also asked Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to strike an attorney fee expert’s declaration that plaintiffs’ lawyers in the black farmers case filed with the fee petition.  DOJ called the declaration “improper.”  Cornell University Law School professor Theodore Eisenberg, who has written several studies on attorney fees and class actions, said in the declaration the plaintiffs’ fee petition in reasonable.  The benefit the plaintiffs’ lawyers obtained for the class, he said, supports a $90.8 million legal fee award.