A recent Law 360 story by Dorothy Atkins, “Judge Calls Atty Fee Bid in $10M Uber Bias Deal ‘Pretty High’,” reports that a California federal judge granted final approval to a $10 million deal resolving claims Uber discriminates against female and minority software engineers, but held off on awarding attorneys' fees, calling Outten & Golden LLP’s $2.5 million fee request "pretty high."

During a hearing in Oakland, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said she would approve the settlement, under which approximately 421 class members would receive an average payout of between $10,000 and $15,000.  But the judge said the 25 percent fee award was high when cross-checked with the lodestar, which is calculated using the attorneys' rates and the number of hours they worked on the case.  "I cannot tell how much efficiency there was ... with respect to the work done that was charged for the class," the judge said.

If approved, the settlement will resolve a putative class action that Uber software engineers Ingrid Avendaño, Roxana del Toro Lopez and Ana Medina launched in October 2017.  The suit claims Uber had an "unchecked, hyper-alpha culture" and discriminated against women and engineers of color, and the amended complaint asserts claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the California Equal Pay Act and the Private Attorneys General Act.  In March, the parties struck the $10 million deal to resolve all the claims, including $50,000 to resolve the PAGA claims.  Uber also agreed to work with an outside consultant to make changes to its systems for evaluating workers.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers preliminarily approved the deal in April and set a final fairness hearing.  During the hearing, the judge took issue with the firm's billing rates and asked class counsel, Jahan C. Sagafi of Outten & Golden, why six attorneys listed in the firm's billing records weren't named on its website.  She also asked the firm how much they were paid.  Sagafi replied that they're either contract attorneys or staff attorneys, and those attorneys were paid between $25 and $75 per hour, but some received benefits and annual bonuses.  The judge said in that case, the firm is billing the class up to 10 times the amount that they're paying their contract attorneys.

"Plaintiffs lawyers charging multiples of 10, I for one do not find it acceptable," the judge said.  "If you want to bring them on as full-time employees with all of the benefits that come with that, that's fine," she said.  "But I don't think it's appropriate that you charge the class even five times [the amount they're getting paid]."  Sagafi said he understood the judge's concern, but said reducing the billed hours for those attorneys would make a "minimal" difference in the attorneys' fees analysis.

Overall, he argued that the 25 percent fee award was warranted, since this is the only class settlement he knows of addressing these specific claims and there was likely a valid, enforceable arbitration agreement that the class members signed.  He also noted that no one objected to the deal and only two class members opted out of it.  Judge Gonzalez Rogers took the arguments regarding attorneys' fees under submission and said she would "get to it as quickly as I can."

The case is Del Toro Lopez v. Uber Technologies Inc., case number 4:17-cv-06255, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.