Waving big fees through the gate:
A Denver District Court judge overseeing a $50 million class-action settlement from Qwest Communications shot down a shareholder group’s request to limit plaintiff attorney fees to $10 million.
Judge John Coughlin gave short shrift to arguments presented by the Association of U S West Retirees, which asked the court — at the very least — to delay settlement approval until attorneys submitted detailed documentation of their hours and expenses.
At a fairness hearing [Aug. 30], the judge ruled the class counsel, led by Los Angeles law firm Lerach Coughlin, was entitled to $15 million, or 30 percent of the settlement, plus an additional $1.3 million in out-of-pocket expenses….
[The retiree association] wanted proof of each firm’s time records and questioned several six-figure expenses, including $176,000 for meals, hotel and travel and $105,000 for photocopying.
“That’s 25 cents a page using your own office copy machine,” Denver attorney Curtis Kennedy, representing the retirees, said Tuesday after the hearing. “Don’t we at least get a discount for volume? Why not 5 cents a page?”
…[L]ast month, the association filed its objections over attorney fees, complaining that the more than $16.3 million Lerach had requested would leave just $33 million to be distributed among the thousands of plaintiff shareholders they represented….
[Kennedy] said the blanket $15 million contingency award represented 2.3 times what the plaintiff lawyers actually put into the case. Paralegal time alone would be compensated at the rate of more than $400 an hour.
“Times are changing,” he told the judge. “Shareholders are beginning to feel they need to step up and object…that these attorney fees are getting out of hand.”
How often will they feel it worth objecting if, as here, they get the back of the judge’s hand for their troubles? (John Accola, Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 31).