Lucy Koh
Okay, maybe she’s a little mad too. District court judge Lucy Koh told the lead plaintiffs’ attorney in Anthem’s $115 million data breach settlement, Eve Cervantez, “I’m deeply disappointed,” after a $38 million fee request — from 53 different law firms — was submitted. This was after the judge had already trimmed the number of firms in leadership positions on the case from eight down to four in 2015.
But clearly if Judge Koh had a problem with 8 lead firms, she’ll be totally cool with 53… right? Yeah… not so much:
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“I would never have appointed you [Cervantez] or Mr. [Andrew] Friedman [co-lead counsel], had I known you were going to pile on 53 law firms on this case,” she said. “And I’m going to keep that in mind if you apply for appointment of counsel in another case with me. I never would have approved 53 law firms in my case. If I thought eight was too many, what made you think I wanted 53 firms churning on this case?”
Cervantez defended the decision to bring in all these firms claiming there was an efficiency gained by having all the lawyers:
“Time was of the essence here,” [Cervantez] said. “We could have had fewer firms working on the case, and it would have taken a much longer time.”
But as Law.com reports, the judge also noted some pretty extreme markups in the bill:
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But Koh, who had asked plaintiffs counsel for additional billing records earlier this week, went over the records one by one, questioning why of the 329 lawyers who submitted bills in the case, more than 100 were partners, and more than two dozen were contract attorneys charging $300 to $400 per hour.
“I would like you to find a single paying client that would have approved these type of markups in a contract attorney,” she said.
Yeah — $400 per hour for a contract attorney seems extreme.
Now the judge says she’s appointing a special master to comb through the bill, and she is asking for detailed records to justify the amounts billed. Maybe the Special Master can bring on a few $400 contract attorneys to help sort through the bills faster?
Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).