Sept 19 (Askume) – After more than four years of litigation, one question remains in a lawsuit against Google for allegedly secretly tracking the Internet browser use of millions of Americans.
But this is a big thing.
A federal judge in California is set to rule on a lawsuit filed by plaintiffs’ attorneys Boies Schiller Flexner, Morgan & Morgan and Susman Godfrey , seeking $217 million in legal fees from Google as it seeks to force the Alphabet unit to delete billions of records, and update privacy disclosures for users whose browsers are set to “invisible” or “private”.
Google has asked U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to award the companies no more than $40 million because they failed to certify the lawsuit as a class action, so they are seeking a windfall that does not include returning any money to consumers. The company denies violating privacy laws.
After the case went to trial last month, Google told Askume that charging legal fees in a case settled for zero dollars was “yet another attempt by them to generate news and line their own pockets.”
The companies responded that the privacy improvements promised by Google would cost consumers $30 billion to $6 billion. They told Rogers that as a lawyer he had invested $62.4 million – 78,880 hours – on the case and that he should be paid three times as much for what he had achieved.
Lawyers for JPMorgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Susman Godfrey partner Bill Carmody and Boies Schiller managing partner Matthew Schwartz declined to comment.
A Google spokesman reiterated the company’s previous statements criticizing the fee requirement. The company’s lawyers, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Class action settlements don’t always include funding to compensate plaintiffs. Experts say it’s not uncommon for judges to set fees in such cases.
Adam Pritchard, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said in an email: “Courts will have to make some estimate of the profitability of such courses, but in the absence of compensation, it’s largely just guesswork.”
Rogers has not said when a ruling will be handed down on the fee dispute, which has been fully briefed and argued, or when the settlement will be finalized. Plaintiffs with similar privacy claims against the online search giant in California courts are also seeking to intervene in the federal case. They are now appealing Rogers’ decision to deny their intervention to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Rogers expressed some of his thoughts on costs at last month’s hearing, saying the plaintiffs were not “fully successful” in winning damages but that he believed the proposed settlement was “not meaningless.”
He questioned some of the plaintiffs’ billing records and said the $667-an-hour fee for document review seemed “excessive.”
Boies Schiller President David Boies argued on behalf of the lawyers, emphasizing the difficulty of the case and saying that Google unfairly targeted some plaintiffs’ lawyers who work 12-hour days, something corporate defense lawyers also often do.
Boies Schiller’s share of the requested Google bonuses is worth about $73 million, according to a Askume analysis of the fee request. It will be a lucrative year for the New York company, which is part of a team that was awarded $667 million in legal fees as a result of a $2.67 billion civil antitrust settlement with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association .
– In other legal fee news related to the case before Rogers, a judge on Wednesday ordered a reduction in fees from attorneys for plaintiffs who earlier this year reached a $490 million settlement with Apple, including one that accused CEO Tim Cook of defrauding shareholders by concealing the fact that iPhone demand in China was declining.
Rogers said that while Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Labton Keller Sucharow’s initial fee request of $122.5 million was based on multiples of their standard rates, the figure was “far too high.” He reduced the award to $107.8 million, or 22 percent of the settlement.
– Office Depot was awarded $927,000 in legal fees in an unsuccessful US copyright lawsuit , after a judge questioned its attorneys’ billing records and rejected its offer of more than $2 million.
– Last week, a New York federal judge awarded $102 million to Quinn Emanuel and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in a $580 million settlement of investors’ allegations that major banks conspired to stifle competition in the stock loan market.
(Additional reporting by Mike Scarcella)
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