$156K Fee Award in $245M Case 'On the Stingy Side' But Upheld By 2nd Circuit
A $245 million federal securities class action settlement never would have been achieved but for its work in bringing the initial federal cases on which it was based, a Pennsylvania law firm contends.
Even if that’s true, however, Chimicles & Tikellis is stuck with an attorney’s fee award of just under $156,000 rather than the $17 million or so that it sought, a federal appeals court has ruled.
A settlement agreement provided for lead counsel to allocate the $52 million in total attorney’s fees and even though the lead plaintiffs lawyers in the case “were no doubt on the stingy side when it came to compensating their brethren, we have not been convinced that the district court abused its discretion in approving class counsel’s allocation,” says the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its written opinion (PDF) yesterday in In re: Adelphia Communications Corp. Securities & Derivative Litigation.
The Chimicles firm put in about 381 hours of work on the case before it was consolidated with other litigation against Adelphia.
Hat tip: New York Law Journal.
