Securities Class Action Trends.
In a January 26, 2016 paper on a 2015 full-year review of securities class actions, NERA Economic Consulting’s consultants Svetlana Starykh and Stefan Boettrich have some interesting findings on fees/costs awards to class counsel. Fees were stable at about 30% as a percentage of recovery in securities class action settlements below $10 million, but these recovery percentages declined as the settlement size soared higher. However, comparing 1996-2010 to 2011-2015 time frames, fee percentages decreased or remained constant for settlements under $1 billion but actually increased for settlements above $1 billion (likely because mega-settlements have become more frequent in the latter time frame). In 2015, aggregate fees and expenses actually received by class counsel approximated $1.095 billion, a 63% increase over the 2014 aggregate (inclusive of fees/costs awarded in cases where there was no cash payment to the class).
Total U.S. Business Outlay To Fight Class Actions.
Law360 reports that a recent study concluded that defending U.S. businesses in 2015 spent $2.1 billion on class action lawsuits, a 3.5% increase over the year before.