Fee Dispute Hotline
(312) 907-7275

Assisting with High-Stakes Attorney Fee Disputes

The NALFA

News Blog

Report: Attorney Fees Declining in Securities Class Actions

February 4, 2013 | Posted in : Study / Report

A recent NERA Economic Consulting report, Recent Trends in Securities Class Action Litigation: 2012 Full-Year Review (pdf),” reports that settlements are up and attorneys’ fees are down in 2012 in federal court.  According to the study, plaintiffs firms that handle securities class actions last year collected attorney fees and expenses amounting to $653 million, a 4 percent increase from 2011, but reflects an overall decline from the period of 1996 to 2009.

Last year’s largest attorney fee award stemmed from a 2004 case against American International Group (AIG) that resulted in two partial settlements totaling $822.5 million.  In that case, the court awarded more than $100 million in fees to plaintiffs firm led by Labaton Sucharow and Hahn Loeser & Parks.  Some other top attorney fee awards in 2012 include:

$55M in Fees from a $200M Settlement with Motorola Inc.

$53M in Fees from a $315M Settlement with Bank of America

$35M in Fees from a $295M Settlement with Bearn Stearns

Nonetheless, NERA’s report says the median proportion of fees to settlements has been declining.  Settlements recovering $100 million to $500 million resulted in fees that were 18.2 percent of that recovery from 2010 to 2012; from 1996 to 2009, that number was 24.2 percent.  The exception was cases with settlements in which more than $1 billion was recovered; in those cases, 12.6 percent of the recovery went to fees from 2010 to 2012, compared with 8.3 percent from 1996 to 2009.