Some case updates
- In Lonardo v. Travelers Insurance, our objection resulted in a $2 million improvement in the settlement. We maintained the objection, and the court approved the settlement; we straightforwardly acknowledged that the court “could” approve the improved settlement (where the attorneys got nearly as much as the class as opposed to more than twice as much) under its discretionary powers, but “shouldn’t,” and the court found that offensive for some reason. To add insult to injury, the court preemptively made findings that we weren’t entitled to even ask for attorneys’ fees for our role in improving the settlement. On a motion to reconsider, the court begrudgingly awarded attorneys’ fees, and then proceeded to come up with bad dicta that suggests that objectors are obligated to engage in expensive discovery about settlement negotiations before they are completed. (The scenario where a settlement is improved by 71% on the eve of the fairness hearing is rare enough that one hopes that does not matter; it’s pretty clear that settling parties would object to the discovery that would produce the evidence that the Lonardo court says is required.) The $40,000 in fees is nice, but it was unfortunate that the court felt the need to insult us along the way; we made it clear that there was substantial work we performed on the case for which we were not seeking fees, and the court repeatedly implied that the only thing we did were the few dozen hours we requested fees for. We did get the court to acknowledge that Perdue v. Kenny A. applies to class-action attorney-fee requests (though that does not explain why the court awarded a 1.4 multiplier to the plaintiffs’ attorneys). If those opinions were issued today, when we have a diversified donor base, we would have appealed. At the time, we were low on funds, and had to make a triage decision to save our powder for more egregiously bad decisions. Judging by Google hits, class members have started to receive their checks, which are 71% larger than they would have been without our objection.
- In the Sears case, the court denied our motion to dismiss and our motion to intervene, the latter because we sought to appeal, and therefore were “obstructive.” That reasoning begs the question when one is entitled to move to intervene for purposes of appeal; the court did not cite the leading Seventh Circuit case on the issue. We will appeal: we believe Devlin gives us standing to do so, and, in any event, the denial of the motion to intervene was clearly erroneous. I am excited about this appeal, as it will give the Seventh Circuit the chance to clarify the law of derivative shareholder lawsuits and whether it is appropriate to bring them for the primary purpose of extracting attorneys’ fees.
- I’m also enthused about our chances in the Dewey v. Volkswagen appeal to the Third Circuit. The plaintiffs have requested a punitive appeal bond, and the district court will rule on that in October. I’ll have a post about that later in the week.
- Alas, I will not be participating in another appeal I was confident about, the Ninth Circuit Yahoo! appeal. As you know, the Center for Class Action Fairness refuses to settle a class action objection unless the withdrawal of the objection results in a settlement that is fair, adequate, and reasonable. Our clients disagreed with that approach, and we have withdrawn as counsel. We did not ask for and will not accept any fees in that representation.