Inflated Requests and Unnecessary Work Efforts Predominated, With District Judge Not Sure Defense Work Was Probative To Combat Unnecessary Plaintiff Work As Far As Gauging Reasonableness Of Plaintiffs’ Fee Request.
Although we are only going on media reports, U.S. District Judge George H. Wu of the Central District of California in Red, et al. v. Kraft Foods, et al., Case No. 2:10-cv-01025 (C.D. Cal.) had to consider plaintiffs’ class counsel’s fee request of $1.9 million in a Lanham Act class action settlement regarding allegations that Kraft was selling/promoting “unhealthy” snacks for 2 years of work (although prior fee requests apparently got knocked down significantly). It did not go well for class counsel in the subsequent “round.”
District Judge Wu concluded that the request was greedy and plainly excessive based upon limited success and lots of unnecessary work that had to be responded to by the defense. Based on this conclusion, the district judge did not find probative the time spent by defense counsel in responding to unnecessary conduct by the other side. Ouch!