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Judge Cuts Attorney Fees in Apple iPhone 4 Settlement

August 14, 2012 | Posted in : Fee Award, Fee Reduction

A recent The Recorder story, “Whyte Takes a Bite out of Attorney Fees in Apple Settlement,” reports that a class action Apple Inc., claiming that faulty antennas in the iPhone 4 caused bad cellular reception, has settled.  But plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t getting everything in their fee request.  U.S. District Senior Judge Ronald Whyte approved a settlement that gives consumers some cash and a device to attach to the phone.  He slashed by about half of plaintiffs’ attorney fees, citing a low number of claims by class members and an oversized group of lawyers.

Plaintiffs in In Re Apple iPhone 4 Products Liability Litigation had moved, unopposed by Apple’s counsel at Morrision & Foerster, for $5.9 million in fees.  That was more than double the plaintiffs’ documented lodestar, or fees for time worked.  Whyte, in cutting the fees to $2.2 million, wrote that the lodestar calculation was already “very generous,” and that it included the time of more attorneys than necessary to efficiently handle the case.  Whyte also noted that the plaintiffs’ attorneys billed at “high-end rates” based upon “liberally kept time records.”

Co-lead counsel Ira Rothken of the Rothken Law Firm in Novato, called the judge’s ruling “fair.”  He and other co-lead counsel, including lawyers from Gardy & Notis in New Jersey, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in Florida and Kirkland & Packard in El Segundo,“understand and respect the decision not to award a multiplier,” he said.