kind of unusual nature of this it was important to be available to ask some questions we were asking the court to do this is an appeal from an f l as a settlement where the district court reversed the agreed upon fee amount by seventy five percent despite the fact that the plaintiffs received more than they could have received a trial and that the amount of the fee request was negotiated separately after the amount of the plaintiff was decided court to reverse with instructions to award the agreed upon amount and the background of of how these settlements get approved is somewhat murky district court split several different ways on whether  approval is even required for it f l us say so especially when that's not a class of collective action defendants typically want settlements approved to guarantee that the plaintiffs have waived their right to bring another claim to seek additional damage liquidated damages the purpose of the review of the settlements is to protect plaintiffs not defendants and not planners counsel and the purpose of the review of attorney feel wards is to protect plaintiffs and to prevent that conflict of interest between the attorney and his counsel that might arise when the defendant is playing paying both bills but again the review of field wards is not meant to protect the defendant from overpaying at all the reviews to protect the plaintiffs not plaintiff's counsel it's also not to protect plaintiffs counsel from agreeing to too little here you had a sophisticated party represented by sophisticated counsel and after the claims were resolved they agree to pay eighty seven thousand five hundred dollars as the payment for the attorneys fees cost and expenses the party submitted the greenman to the court the court asked for more information testing out that ba agreement translated for the party how did you come up with the amount to the players in this case out of a long history and that information was provided and then the district court asked for the plaintiffs to file a motion for attorney's fees which was provided and submitted billing and documentation showing that there were over five hundred thousand dollars in fees and over nine hundred ninety thousand dollars in costs and expenses incurred throughout the course of the litigation and also discussed the fact that the parties had agreed upon this amount and given the facts and circumstances the court should award that fifty i want to ask about the mediation where you were you director  asked her how did you initiate how did the mediation who initiated the mediation there were actually three in person settlement conferences in the case i believe that offense asked for all three and at all three the defendants wanted to negotiate the amount to be paid to plaintiffs and the amount to be paid to the class separately often done differently and that's not required but in this case the defendants wanted to negotiate that matter separately and that's what was done at the third the third settlement conference there was one with a private mediator there was a one with a judge for before the case was decertified and there was one with judge ford after the case was decertified none of those three settlement conferences resulted in the settlement after the third settlement conference and the court's decision on motion for summary judgment the parties resolve their dispute and enter into the agreement really the seminal case on attorneys fees and hensley the supreme court noted that ideally the parties are going to agree on the amount of fees that hardly ever happens because it's it's a tough thing to negotiate we always want the plaintiffs counsel always wants more missed on terms that the court deems to be proper right yes you're so wouldn't that give the court the authority to scrutinize the fee agreement your honor while the court would have some to scrutinize the agreement it would still need to be scrutinized and a manner to promote the purposes by which you would do it and doesn't say you know for the purposes of protecting the plaintiff and the plaintiff's lawyer no you're on  agreed to dismiss the case arms are the court the parties agree to dismiss the case with prejudice the stipulation could have been could have been achieved under forty one a one but for the fact that defendants w court first have to have jurisdiction before rule forty one would apply i'm sorry wouldn't the district court first have jurisdiction before rule forty one could be applied they would have to guess you are the court would have to have subject matter jurisdiction before forty one one could be applied but in this case the complaint was filed that there was ever a challenge to subject matter jurisdiction and it was in terms of jurisdiction over review your are believe that that when the parties submitted the motion it to the core to approve the fee request they would have jurisdiction to to look at that but it would still be bounded by what the courts have said previously is an appropriate  consideration for the district and if this practice stands it's difficult enough to agree on fees as it is and if a fee agreement comes together parties want  the for the agreement what was agreed to be paid there's no reason that the court couldn't set aside the agreement as well and say well defendant i'm not going to dismiss this case unless you agree to pay one hundred eighty five thousand again this case you have reversible difficult to tell what the district court thought other than the agreed upon amount was too much and that he thought twenty two thousand five hundred dollars was a good amount but didn't you invite the district court to  because the invitation was to simply confirm the party's agreement the invitation wasn't simply to look at it and do what you think is right the invitation was we don't think you need to calculate this because it's clear eighty seven thousand five hundred is reasonable that's what they agreed to pay and there is no taint to the settlement we did invite the district court just simply exercise his judgment on what he felt was a reasonable amount of attorney's fees cost and time consuming but here there is no reason to go through that fact intensive and time consuming analysis because unless the court finds that it's less than eighty seven thousand five hundred the agreement would say it was capped at eighty seven thousand five hundred our final argument to just want to redress briefly is that if it is reversed with instructions to calculate the lodestar would ask that it be reassigned to a different judge given the unusual circumstances