Legal Fee Tracker: Google, privacy lawyers clash over $217 million fee bid
By David Thomas
Sept 19 (Reuters) -After more than four years of litigation, one sticking point remains in a sprawling lawsuit over Google's alleged secret tracking of millions of Americans' internet browser use.
But it's a big one.
A federal judge in California is poised to rule on a petition by the plaintiffs' lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner, Morgan & Morgan and Susman Godfrey for Google to pay them $217 million in legal fees, as part of a settlement requiring the Alphabet unit to delete billions of records and update its privacy disclosures to users who set their browsers to "incognito" or "private."
Google has asked U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to award the firms no more than $40 million, arguing that they are seeking a windfall for a settlement that includes no money for consumers after they failed to get the lawsuit certified as a class action. The company denies violating privacy law.
After a hearing in the case last month, Google told Reuters the lawyers' fee bid was "just another attempt to generate news and line their own pockets in a case they settled for $0."
The firms counter that Google's promised privacy reforms are worth $3 billion to $6 billion to consumers. They told Rogers they invested $62.4 million in lawyer time in the case — 78,880 hours — and that their achievements warrant a fee award more than three times that amount.
Attorneys from Morgan & Morgan did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Susman Godfrey partner Bill Carmody and Boies Schiller managing partner Matthew Schwartz declined to comment.
A Google spokesperson reiterated the company's prior statement criticizing the fee request. The company's lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Class action settlements don't always include a damages fund for plaintiffs. It is also not uncommon for judges to award fees in such cases, experts said.
"Courts have to come up with some assessment of the benefit created for the class, but in the absence of damages, it's mainly guesswork," University of Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard said in an email.
Rogers has not said when she will rule on the fee clash, which has been fully briefed and argued, and finalize the settlement. Plaintiffs who brought similar privacy claims against the internet search giant in California state court are also trying to intervene in the federal case. They are now appealing Rogers' denial of their intervention to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Rogers offered some clues about her thinking on the fees at last month's hearing, saying the plaintiffs were not "entirely successful" given their failure to win damages, but calling the proposed settlement they achieved "not insignificant."
She questioned some of the plaintiffs' billing records, telling them that charging $667 per hour fees for document review seemed "excessive."
Arguing for the lawyers, Boies Schiller chairman David Boies emphasized the difficulty of the case and said Google was unfairly taking aim at some plaintiffs lawyers logging 12-hour days when corporate defense attorneys routinely do the same.
Boies Schiller's share of the requested Google award is roughly $73 million, according to a Reuters analysis of the fee request. It would add to a lucrative year in fees for the New York firm, which was part of the team awarded a $667 million legal-fee award stemming from a $2.67 billion civil antitrust settlement with Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
- In other legal fee news, involving a case that is also before Rogers, the judge on Wednesday awarded a reduced fee to plaintiffs lawyers who reached a $490 million settlement with Apple earlier this year over allegations that CEO Tim Cook defrauded shareholders by concealing falling demand for iPhones in China.
Rogers said the original fee request of $122.5 million sought by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Labaton Keller Sucharow relied on a multiplier to their standard rates that was "extraordinarily high." She reduced the fee award to $107.8 million, or 22% of the settlement.
- Office Depot has been awarded $927,000 in legal fees in a failed U.S. copyright lawsuit against it after a judge questioned its lawyers' billing records and rejected its fee bid for more than $2 million.
- A federal judge in New York last week awarded $102 million to Quinn Emanuel and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll for their work on a $580 million settlement for investors who accused major banks of conspiring to curb competition in the stock lending market.
(Legal Fee Tracker is a weekly feature exploring attorney compensation awards and disputes in class actions, bankruptcies and other matters. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com.)
Additional reporting by Mike Scarcella
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Reporting by David Thomas
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