ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Legal Newsline) - Ignoring objectors who said private lawyers were claiming too much of a $625 million settlement to be paid almost entirely by Michigan taxpayers, a federal judge awarded some $180 million in fees to plaintiff attorneys in the Flint lead pollution litigation.
Citing the “hard and persistent work” by lawyers who lined up thousands of clients to sue over Flint’s botched changeover to a new municipal water system, U.S. District Judge Judith Levy awarded them roughly 25% of the settlement, including a $40 million “common benefit” fee to the lead attorneys in the case. The Plaintiffs’ Leadership Group included Levy Konigsberg, Napoli Shkolnick, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Pitt McGhee Palmer & Rivers.
The fees were a slight reduction from the 32% requested by plaintiff attorneys, which would have given them more than $200 million of the $625 million taxpayer-funded settlement.
Objectors represented by the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and others said the fee award was excessive given the size of the settlement and trend for courts to scale back lawyer payouts as funds exceed $100 million. Napoli Shkolnik, for example, submitted billing records for “associates” worth $500 an hour when in fact they were temp attorneys likely making a fraction of that amount, Hamilton Lincoln said.
Objectors asked Judge Levy for access to the billing records submitted to the court but the judge refused, saying they had been examined by a special master and “further inquiry and scrutiny by objectors is unnecessary.”
“No evidence of trickery or of inflating rates, whatsoever, has been identified through this independent review,” the judge wrote in her Feb. 4 order.
The judge also rejected a request to order the State of Michigan to comment on the fee request. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, agreed to a “clear sailing” clause under which the State wouldn’t challenge the private attorneys’ fee request, although such agreements are considered a factor suggesting possible collusion between plaintiffs and the defense in class actions. Nessel received $7,100 in campaign donations from name partner Michael L. Pitt of Pitt McGhee in 2021 and $6,800 from Deborah A. LaBelle, another lawyer who will participate in the fee award, according to state records.
In her order, Judge Levy said “determining the appropriate fee award is a challenging task.”
“As is common in settlements,” she noted, the fees will be deducted from the recovery the lawyers negotiated for their clients. “Accordingly, every dollar awarded to the attorneys is a dollar less for the claimants,” the judge said.
Given that, she said, the court must “balance society’s strong interest in paying lawyers for their work and encouraging counsel to accept similar engagements” while maximizing benefits for claimants.
The judge demanded contemporaneous billing records throughout the litigation, and lawyers reported more than 182,000 hours of common benefit legal work, she said. A special master reviewed billing records and submitted a report finding them for the most part accurate.
Michigan, which will supply $600 million of the settlement, demanded all claimants be treated the same, regardless of whether they had their own lawyers.
Other law firms sharing in the fees include Susman Godfrey, Weitz & Luxenberg, Motley Rice, the NAACP, the Law Offices of Teresa A. Bingman, Goodman & Hurwitz, The Dedendum Group and Abood Law Firm.