Third District Sustains Substantial Fee Award in Unpublished Decision.
Who says that class action attorneys are greedy? No matter what your bent, the next case is a refreshing example of how substantial fees are justified in a class action settlement generating substantial recovery for class members.
Sutter Health Uninsured Pricing Case, Case No. C054983 (3d Dist. Jan. 27, 2009) (unpublished) involved a class action where plaintiffs mediated a complete victory settlement including a substantial attorney’s fees award, arising out of a case that alleged uninsured patients were dunned for a full sticker health care price in certain circumstances (as compared to insured patients). The class settlement was for $276 million in retrospective relief, with class counsel obtaining an award of about $4 million in fees based on a lodestar of $1.4 million.
An objector challenged the fee award as being based on inadequate documentation. No go, said the Third District in an unpublished decision.
The attorney’s fees were reasonable, representing only 1.4% of the $276 million settlement fund and a 2.52 multiplier on the $ 1.4 million lodestar—a “modest recovery,” according to the Court of Appeal. (Slip Opn, at p. 25.)
As far as fee substantiation was concerned, the summaries of hours expended in declarations by class counsel sufficed. It was not necessary that the class attorneys present hourly timesheets in support of the fee request. (See, e.g., Wershba v. Apple Computer, Inc., 91 Cal.App.4th 224, 254-255 (2001); Weber v. Langholz, 39 Cal.App.4th 1578, 1587 (1995).) For consistent decisions in the fee substantiation area, see our category “Cases: Substantiation of Reasonableness of Fee Requests.”