Takeaway: Courts are continuing to take a hard look at class action fee awards, and in In re T-Mobile Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, --- F.4th ----, 2024 WL 3561874 (8th Cir. July 29, 2024), the Eighth Circuit...more
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Classified Monthly: A Roundup of Class Action Decisions from Federal Appellate Courts. The Roundup normally will arrive in your inbox the first week of each month and will cover the...more
The Ninth Circuit recently struck a blow against plaintiffs’ attorneys’ ability to recover handsome attorney’s fee awards in class action settlements when there is little actual benefit to the class. In Lowery v Rhapsody...more
In Lowery v. Rhapsody International, Inc., —F.4th—, 2023 WL 3857499 (June 7, 2023), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed an award of attorneys’ fees to class counsel that was more than thirty times the amount...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in McKnight v. Hinojosa, No. 21-16623, 2022 WL 17333820 (9th Cir. Nov. 30, 2022) considered whether the proposed class action settlement was a "coupon settlement" and therefore...more
The 7th Circuit recently vacated a 25% attorneys’ fee award in In re Stericycle Securities Litigation, No. 20-2055, 2022 WL 1564997, at *1–14 (7th Cir. May 18, 2022). The Court’s reasoning focused on the previous litigation...more
A federal district court rejected a novel request from class counsel for reimbursement of counsel’s litigation funding expenses. According to the court in Perez v. Rash Curtis & Assoc., No. 16-03396 (N.D. Cal. October 1,...more
Morrison v. Berry, C.A. No. 12808-VCG (Del. Ch. July 12, 2021) - Delaware courts generally do not award special compensation to lead plaintiffs in class action litigation. Delaware courts typically limit awards to...more
Key Takeaways - The Ninth Circuit holds that, following changes to Rule 23(e), the Bluetooth factors for fairness of pre-certification class action settlements also apply to post-certification settlements....more
Ninth Circuit decision prohibits use of lodestar-only methodology to calculate a fee award for class action settlements involving coupons. The decision contemplates coupon class action settlements where coupons are...more
Welcome back to the Class Action & MDL Roundup! Our summer edition covers notable class actions from the second quarter of 2020. In this edition, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) weighed in on several...more
Attorney fee awards are a major driver of class action litigation – both in the employment and other contexts. How they are awarded, and what is “reasonable” has been an ongoing source of contention in many cases. A recent...more
More than seven years ago, female sales representatives who worked for Merck filed a class and collective action alleging discrimination in pay on the basis of their gender in violation of the Equal Pay Act (EPA) and Title...more
It’s OK. The Attorneys Still Get More Than $1,000 Per Hour - One of the drivers of the increased number of wage and hour cases is the prospect of handsome attorney fee awards. ...more
Companies may be inclined to offer “coupons” or similar benefits to settle consumer class actions. While offering coupons is permissible, in In re Easysaver Rewards Litigation, No. 16-56307, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 28000 (9th...more
As the U.S. Supreme Court kicks off its 2018 term this week, it prepares to take up a series of firsts, including questions about the America Invents Act, securities fraud and privacy-related class action litigation. At the...more
Class actions challenging corporate merger transactions often result in settlement agreements in which the only remedy obtained by the plaintiff class is the company defendants’ additional disclosure of information related to...more
Mike Greenwald and Greenwald Davidson have been making a heck of a lot of noise in TCPAland recently. Not only are they the law firm behind the recent Bad Reyes ruling, they also convinced the Eleventh Circuit that TCPA...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In an opinion laced with frustration over a third appeal in a class action involving attorneys’ fees, the Seventh Circuit ruled that an objector was entitled to recover attorneys’ fees from class counsel’s...more
In Laffitte v. Robert Half International Inc., No. S222996 (Aug. 11, 2016), the California Supreme Court held, in an employment class action lawsuit, that when attorney fees are awarded to class counsel from a common fund,...more
The Northern District of Illinois vacated its grant of fees to class counsel for work performed following an initial fee award, finding that Rule 23(h) required notice to the class regarding counsel’s new fee request, even...more
The Seventh Circuit affirmed a class action coupon settlement involving “clear sailing” and “kicker” clauses and a fee award based on the lodestar analysis rather than the value of the redeemed coupons, and notwithstanding a...more
In In Re Southwest Airlines Voucher Litigation, Case No. 13-3264 (7th Cir. Aug. 20, 2015), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a fee award to class counsel in a class action that resulted in a “coupon...more
Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered, so the saying goes. As we’ve noted before on Oct. 7, June 5, and Dec. 18, courts are starting to examine attorney fee awards in class action settlements much more closely, and the...more
Some corporate practitioners could have the impression that significant fee awards are granted as a matter of course in M&A class action litigation, even where the results obtained by class counsel were supplemental (and...more