A recentNLJstory, “MGA Should Receive $108M in Fees in Bratz Case, Special Master Finds” reports that MGA Entertainment Inc. should receive $108 million in attorney fees, according to a discovery master’s recommendation.  The recommendation was issued on June 20 by Robert O’Brien, who is acting as special master on attorney fee issues.  Court documents filed by both sides regarding the proposed attorney fees has been redacted to hide the amounts, but on June 30, U.S. District Judge David Carter denied all requests made since April 25 to file documents under seal, many of which related to the special master’s recommendation.

In the underlying case, MGA, manufacturer of the Bratz doll, was seeking $129 million in attorney fees and $32 million in costs after a jury found that Mattel, maker of Barbie, had stolen trade secrets from MGA by planting spies to industry trade shows.  The jury rejected Mattel’s assertion that MGA had infringed on its copyright by stealing away a designer who took the Bratz doll concept with him, concluding that Mattel did not own the rights to the first four models of the Bratz doll plus two newer versions.

Mattel has picked apart much of the special master’s recommendation, which did not address MGA’s costs.  Mattel also wants more than 9,000 pages of legal billing invoices that MGA turned over to the special master in order to oppose the fee recommendation.  Depriving Mattel of those documents “would be a miscarriage of justice and a deprivation of due process,” wrote Mattel’s lawyer, Michael Zeller, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.