Fee Dispute Hotline
(312) 907-7275

Assisting with High-Stakes Attorney Fee Disputes

The NALFA

News Blog

Judge Approves $2.1M in Fees in Illumina Shareholder Suit

March 19, 2021 | Posted in : Class Incentive Awards, Expenses / Costs, Fee Award, Fee Request, Hourly Rates, Hours Billled, Practice Area: Class Action / Mass Tort / MDL, Settlement Data / Terms

A recent Law 360 story by Emille Ruscoe, “Levi & Korsinsky Earns $2.1M for Illumina Shareholder Suit,reports that the Levi & Korsinsky LLP legal team representing investors in biotechnology company Illumina Inc. in their proposed shareholder class action will receive $2.1 million in attorney fees, a federal judge in San Diego.  In the fee order, U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz granted the firm's request for $2.1 million for their work on the case, which accused the company of artificially inflating its stock prices by hiding declining sales from the public.

Judge Lorenz also approved reimbursement of litigation expenses totaling $167,727, agreeing to all of the requested expenses except for the $2,000 the firm asked for to pay its attorneys' travel expenses for the final approval hearing in the matter.  The judge also agreed to a proposed $25,000 incentive award for plaintiff Anton Agoshkov and to $1,000 incentive awards apiece for two other plaintiffs, Braden Van Der Wall and Steven Romanoff.

"The requested fees and expenses are within the range approved by this court in its preliminary approval of class settlement, and are therefore presumptively reasonable," Judge Lorenz said.  The judge noted that the fee reflected hourly fees of $850 to $1,025 for Levi Korsinsky partners and $350 to $650 for associates, and that the firm spent an estimated 3,937 hours working on the case.  The parties to the suit told Judge Lorenz they'd reached a settlement deal in June 2019 in a motion for preliminary approval that called the $13.85 million deal, which represents a 4.6% recovery of an estimated $300 million in damages, a "fair, reasonable, and adequate" outcome for the proposed class.