A recent Law 360 by Tom Lotshaw, “11th Circ. Won’t Stay Toss Sanford Heisler’s $77M Fee Suit,” reports that an Eleventh Circuit panel has denied Sanford Heisler Sharp LLP's bid for an emergency stay of a Georgia federal judge's order that required the law firm to end a state court suit challenging its share of a $77.5 million attorney fee award in the Equifax data breach multidistrict litigation settlement.  In an order, Judges Charles R. Wilson, Britt C. Grant and Robert J. Luck said Sanford Heisler did not make the requisite showing for a stay pending appeal.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. had ordered Sanford Heisler end the Tennessee state court suit it filed against several co-lead firms in the Equifax litigation by Monday, saying the suit was an attempt to undermine his management of the MDL, which settled when Equifax agreed to pay up to $425 million to consumers for a 2017 data breach.  In its appeal, Sanford Heisler sought the stay to preserve its ability to challenge the attorney fee distribution in state court, claiming it had received "an inadequate and disproportionately low fee under applicable common law principles."

In their own filing with the Eleventh Circuit, the challenged co-lead firms — Stueve Siegel Hanson LLP, DiCello Levitt LLC and Doffermyre Shields Canfield & Knowles LLC — claimed Sanford Heisler was "allocated a modest share," "reflecting its minor role" as one of 48 non-leadership firms in the MDL.  The co-lead firms said Sanford Heisler reported spending 1,213 hours with a lodestar value of nearly $270,000 during the entire litigation and 330 hours with a value of about $63,000 after co-lead counsel was appointed.

"[Sanford Heisler's] approved time amounted to 519.8 hours having a lodestar value of $106,274," the co-lead firms told the Eleventh Circuit.  They said Sanford Heisler later claimed in the Tennessee state court suit that it had spent more than 3,900 hours on the MDL with a lodestar value exceeding $1.4 million.  "[Sanford Heisler's] suit collaterally attacks the district court's management of the MDL, seeks compensation for work that the district court expressly directed not be compensable, and tries to relitigate the hours and lodestar for which it was credited in the MDL," the co-lead firms said in a court filing.

Kevin Sharp, the co-vice chairman of Sanford Heisler, said the contention is not only about how much it received, but the "black box" process that co-lead counsel used to determine how $77.5 million in attorney fees were apportioned.  "When you have that kind of money and hand it to a small group of people to dole out with unfettered discretion, that can't be what was intended in the running of MDLs," Sharp said.  "What we're saying is that our value was greater than what they recognized, and we cannot understand what they did because it's all in a black box, and it's the same for everyone else who wasn't part of leadership."