As reported by Amaris Elliott-Engel in a September 21, 2012 post at Corporate Counsel, over 150 lawyers from 50 plaintiff law firms are seeking court approval of disbursing up to $143,75 million in attorney’s fees and costs based upon the “common benefit” doctrine in the federal Avandia multidistrict litigation, where 65,000 claims have been winnowed down to between 500-600 cases–meaning settlement of a lot of claims in a case with very complex and conflicting scientific opinions on causation. (The requested fees are estimated to be 6.25% of the settlements reached in the litigation, according to the fee motion.) The individual plaintiffs’ steering committee members supposedly had “carrying costs” of $750,000 to $1 million. According to the article, close to 147,000 hours were submitted for common benefit work, and over 134,000 work hours were approved by the forensic accountant retained by the plaintiffs’ counsel. At a recent hearing before U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe (E.D. Pa.), the judge verbally indicated seeing no reason to not approve the motion, although it was taken under submission.