T-Mobile class action plaintiffs slash legal fee bid to $46 million
By Mike Scarcella
Sept 11 (Reuters) -Lawyers who represented T-Mobile customers in a $350 million class action settlement have asked a U.S. judge to award them $46 million in legal fees after a federal appeals court struck down their earlier bid for nearly twice the amount.
The attorneys in a filing on Tuesday night in Missouri federal court said $46 million was justified following a decision in July by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found the original $78 million award to be a “windfall.”
The lawyers said approval of the reduced amount would minimize any further delay and help get money into the hands of class members who accused T-Mobile of a data security breach.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did two attorneys who opposed the original fee bid.
T-Mobile also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company did not oppose the original $78 million fee award.
T-Mobile in 2022 settled the consumer privacy case for $350 million, and also said it would spend an additional $150 million on upgraded security efforts. It denied any wrongdoing.
The settlement resolved privacy claims from an estimated 76 million T-Mobile customers whose personal information was compromised in a cyber breach.
In July, the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court in a 3-0 ruling said the attorneys' initial fee award was too high based on the hours of legal work they spent on the case.
The panel said reducing the fee amount by half — to about $39 million — would not harm the class attorneys because their hourly rate would work out to $3,500 to $4,750.
The class lawyers said the requested amount of nearly $46 million amounted to 13.08% of the $350 million cash fund. That percentage, they said, is lower than recent data breach settlements involving Equifax, Yahoo! And health insurer Anthem.
The attorneys argued their request was "reasonable by any metric."
The case is In re: T-Mobile Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, No. 4:21-md-03019-BCW.
For plaintiffs: Norman Siegel of Stueve Siegel Hanson; Cari Campen Laufenberg of Keller Rohrback; and James Pizzirusso of Hausfeld
For T-Mobile: Kristy McAlister Brown and Donald Houser of Alston & Bird
Read more:
US appeals court tosses ‘windfall’ $78 mln legal fee in T-Mobile lawsuit
Lawyers fight over $78 mln fee bid in T-Mobile data breach settlement
T-Mobile to pay $350 mln in settlement over massive hacking
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