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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS 

EASTERN DIVISION 

PHILIP CHARVAT, on behalf of ) Docket No. 12 C 5746 

himself and others similarly )

situated, )

) 

 Plaintiffs, ) Chicago, Illinois 

) March 5, 2018 

 v. ) 1:13 p.m. 

)

ELIZABETH VALENTE, RESORT )

MARKETING GROUP, INC., TRAVEL )

SERVICE NETWORK, INC., TSN )

TRAVEL, INC., TSN INTERNATIONAL, )

INC., TSN MARKETING, LLC, )

CARNIVAL CORPORATION & PLC, )

ROYAL CARIBBEAN CRUISES, LTD., )

NCL (Bahamas) LTD., )

 )

 Defendants. )

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS - Motion Hearing 

BEFORE THE HONORABLE ANDREA R. WOOD 

APPEARANCES (via conference call): 

For the Plaintiffs: LAW OFFICE OF MATTHEW P. McCUE, by 

MR. MATTHEW P. McCUE 

1 South Avenue 

3rd Floor 

Natick, MA 07160 

BURKE LAW OFFICES, LLC by 

MR. ALEXANDER H. BURKE 

155 North Michigan Avenue 

Suite 9020 

Chicago, IL 60601 

For Objector Evan E. Shelton: 

MR. JONATHAN HILTON 

20 South Third Street 

Suite 210 

Columbus, oh 43215 

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APPEARANCES (Continued, via conference call): 

For Defendant Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., and Norwegian 

Cruise Lines: 

FOREMAN FRIEDMAN, PA, by 

MS. CATHERINE J. MACIVOR 

2 South Biscayne Road 

Suite 2300 

Miami, FL 33131 

ALSO PRESENT (via conference call:) 

MR. PHIL COOPER, 

Kurtzman Carson Consultants 

APPEARANCES (In Person): 

For Defendant Carnival Corporation & PLC: 

SWANSON MARTIN & BELL, LLP, by 

MR. JEFFREY S. BECKER 

MR. DARREN B. WATTS 

330 North Wabash Avenue 

Suite 3300 

Chicago, IL 60611 

Court Reporter: LISA H. BREITER, CSR, RMR, CRR 

Official Court Reporter 

219 S. Dearborn Street, Room 1854B 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

(312) 818-6683 

lisa_breiter@ilnd.uscourts.gov 

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THE CLERK: All rise.

(Call to order.)

THE COURT: Call the case, And I think the microphones

at the counsel table are turned on. So those people that are

here can sit at the counsel table instead of the podium. I'm

guessing the folks on the phone are seated. It's only fair.

Call case and appearances. 

THE CLERK: Case 12 CV 7546, Charvat vs. Travel

Services.

MR. BECKER: Good afternoon, your honor. Jeff Becker

and Darren Watts on behalf of Carnival Corporation.

MS. MACIVOR: Catherine Macivor on behalf of Royal

Caribbean Cruises Limited and income about ham mom the.

MR. McCUE: Matthew McCue for the plaintiff.

MR. BURKE: Alex Burke for the plaintiff.

MR. HILTON: Jonathan Hilton for Objector Shelton.

MR. COOPER: This is Phil Cooper from KCC.

THE COURT: okay. Thank you for joining us,

Mr. Cooper I appreciate it, especially on short notice. Is

that everyone?

MR. BECKER: It is, Judge.

THE COURT: So I have a list of questions. Perhaps I

should start by asking the parties whether you thought about

this situation any further over the weekend and have any

proposals or changes to your proposal that you want to put on

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the table from the outset.

Otherwise, I will start asking questions based on what

was presented to me last week.

MR. MC CUE: Sure, your Honor. This is Matthew McCue.

I think the only thing that we did not get into detail with you

last week was in response to KCC's concerns about costs. And

I'll remind you it's somewhat unknown what the ultimate cost

would be because that's dependent upon how many consumers

provide verification documents.

What the parties have discussed and the cruise lines

agreed is that they would make paralegals available at the law

firms of Ms. Macivor and Mr. Becker, available to essentially

do the backroom work of compiling, organizing the verification

documents.

Especially if they are willing to put more money into

this case to deal with this issue versus push those costs over

to KCC, which was a concern of ours. And to be clear, they

would only be organizing and compiling the documents. They

would not be unilaterally making decisions about adequacy of

responses, that it would only be made jointly. So that was the

only issue I wanted to bring to your attention.

There's a second point in that the order we submitted,

I think it gives KCC 10 days to make the -- send out the

e-mail, and they informed me today they need 17 days to do

that. So regardless of which option we ultimately decide to

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employ, they will need a little more time to get that e-mail

out. But that will not affect the ultimate time frame of how

much time we need to do this.

With that said, really the issue for today is to

discuss these two options. And you had asked Mr. Cooper for

guidance specifically in regards to their suggestion.

THE COURT: Okay. So before I move to my questions on

the proposals, Mr. McCue, so if I understand you correctly, the

arrangement that the parties have been discussing would shift

the cost to the law firms administrating this extra step. 

Is that going to be reflected in a request for fees of

anybody?

MR. BECKER: No, Judge. So this is mostly going to be

on our former firm, Ms. Macivor's firms I would think. The

idea was rather than have this be a burden or an expense taken

on by the administrator, which would be the burden of the

settlement fund, it would be additional funds our clients would

pay outside of the settlement fund to have more money to stay

with the class. We're not filing any sort of petition for

fees.

THE COURT: And plaintiffs' law firms are not going to

be involved in sharing in any of this burden?

MR. BECKER: In that regard, Mr. McCue, to the extent

that there's a challenge, would have to weigh in on that. But

I can't speak for him as to whether he would ask for the fees.

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I would like to think the answer's no but I'll leave that to

him to respond to.

THE COURT: Mr. McCue, is that plan going to result in

a greater fee request from plaintiff's counsel?

MR. MC CUE: It will not, your Honor. We're going to

petition for a common fund percentage of the funds. So

regardless of the number of hours we've spent to date or we'll

spend in the future, our request will be the same.

THE COURT: Okay. That's good to know. Let me start

by directing a question to the lawyers about the proposed

settlement itself. I want to go back. 

And in preparation for this hearing, I took another

look at the preliminary approval order and the notice that went

out to potential class members, and I was reminded that the

class definition in this case includes users of phone lines. 

And in considering the issue of multiple people

submitting for multiple lines and at what point it looks fishy,

it was unclear to me how the parties' status report and the

affidavit that was submitted by the administrator accounts for

the fact that somebody can submit a claim if they are a user of

a phone line, but not the quote owner or subscriber. Is that

something that the parties have thought about?

MR. McCUE: From the plaintiffs' perspective --

THE COURT: For the folks who are at the phone, I know

it's a little tedious, but because we do have a court reporter,

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I'm going to need you to ask you to state your name before you

start talking even if you're pretty sure that we'll recognize

you by your voice, okay?

MR. McCUE: Sure. Matthew McCue speaking, your Honor.

My memory of the agreement -- and, please, Cathy and Jeff,

correct me if I'm wrong -- is that the standing to file a claim

is with the owner, user or subscriber to a phone line. 

And my memory is that if we had multiple claims filed

for the same number that there was a process that we could look

at to see who filed a claim first or basically administratively

figure out who would have priority. But I do not think that

only users could file a claim. The standing was broader than

that.

THE COURT: Yeah, and I'm actually concerned the other

way, that the parties' concern about, you know, verifying that

people are the proper owner of a line by uploading their bills

and things of that nature seems to not address at all the fact

that you may have thousands of people who submitted through the

online portal based on the fact that they are users of the

line, who wouldn't have any documentation at hand to show that

they were the user of a line, and there might be multiple

people who use a line.

So, you know, maybe it's a -- I don't know -- a common

phone at a college dorm that might have 20 people on that floor

who are using it.

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MR. McCUE: Your Honor, Matthew McCue again for the

plaintiff. You know, some of these issues just go back to the

fact that this is a unique situation, and we're trying our best

to figure out what's the best way to proceed.

But in terms of that specific problem, the way I had

envisioned the verification requirement would that it would be

very broad. It wouldn't just be a phone bill. It would

literally be any type of documentation that could show that

that person used that line.

So, you know, an application for something that has

the phone number listed on the application, a business card.

You know, literally it could be very broad to deal with that

situation, that yes, not everybody's going to have a phone

bill.

And I think if we -- if we have an interpretation of

what type of verification documents is satisfactory that's very

broad, I think we can deal with that specific problem.

MR. BECKER: This is Mr. Becker, and I agree with

everything Mr. McCue just spoke about. If there's a common --

you know, the verification issue aside for a moment, if there

are multiple people using one phone number, as the settlement

was approved preliminarily, only one person would be able to

actually receive a claim under that anyway. And it would be

the first person that filed the settlement agreement preventing

20 people from filing the same phone number, so to speak.

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With respect to the verification issue, I think it

does make sense also, your Honor, to consider putting --

THE COURT: Is that in the preliminary approval order?

MR. BECKER: Yeah, yeah. 

THE COURT: Which paragraph? 

MR. BECKER: I don't have it in front of me. I'll

have to pull it up. But if someone on the phone has it in

front of them, there was a protocol for that.

THE COURT: Does anybody on the phone know where I can

find in the preliminary approval order that if multiple users

submit for the same line, then there's a process for

determining which of those users actually gets to collect?

MS. MACIVOR: I am looking, your Honor, as we speak.

This is Catherine Macivor.

MR. HILTON: Jonathan Hilton. I think it might be

Section 2.49. That would be page 17. It says, "The settlement

class member may submit multiple claims only if they have

multiple phone numbers listed."

THE COURT: So that's in the settlement agreement; is

that correct? You're saying it's in paragraph 2.69?

MR. HILTON: I was actually thinking 2.49 in the

settlement agreement, but --

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. HILTON: -- I may have jumped the gun.

THE COURT: So what I'm wondering is if there was

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something that somebody submitting a claim would see such as

either the notice that went out or perhaps the preliminary

approval order, which I think people would be more likely to

look at than to somehow get access to the docket and look at

the settlement agreement itself, that tells them that that's

how users will be treated. There's something --

MR. HILTON: Your Honor, sorry. Jonathan Hilton

again, sorry.

MR. McCUE: Your Honor, just very briefly --

THE COURT: Who is speaking?

MR. McCUE: Matthew McCue is speaking. Just reminded

the Court that under the -- in the website portal as well, when

someone affirmed and certified, they said that -- the check box

says, "I affirm I am the owner, user or subscriber of the

line."

So I think that helps inform people that it is broader

in terms of who we're talking about here.

THE COURT: Yes, but I'm specifically asking about the

point of if there are multiple users of a line that submit

claims, is there anything in the notice or the portal that

tells them not all of the users will be able to collect?

MR. COOPER: This is Phil Cooper from KCC.

In terms of our NIS (phonetic), the answer would be

that we did have the court documents posted on the website that

would provide that information pursuant to whatever paragraph

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the parties are referring to. So that documentation was

available readily at the web portal. They didn't need to go to

the docket to fetch it.

MR. HILTON: Your Honor, Jonathan Hilton again. The

section in the settlement was Section 9.1. It says that if

multiple claims are submitted for one particular number, the

first claimant to submit his or her claim form will be

recognized as the valid claim for that particular phone number.

So first in time.

MR. BECKER: And I don't have the preliminary order in

front of me. I know that a majority of the settlement

agreement protocol was incorporated into the order as well.

And then all those documents were made available to anyone who

went to the portal.

I mean, again, the people that are going to the portal

aren't receiving the actual notice. They're watching the news,

going to the website, filling out their information. And all

the information we're talking about is available for them to

review. 

The preliminary order, the settlement agreement, the

notices are all online for them when they submit their

information. But that is the correct provision that you

referred to just now.

THE COURT: Okay. So going back to the situation

where somebody is a user of a line, only one person submits a

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claim for that line, the parties seem to be fairly confident

that anybody that's a user of a line is going to have some

piece of documentation that they can upload. I suppose I'm

skeptical of that. So far we've had the example of a business

card being used.

MS. MACIVOR: Your Honor, may I address that, your

Honor's concern on that? 

THE COURT: Go ahead, Ms. Macivor. 

MS. MACIVOR: This is Catherine Macivor.

THE COURT: Okay.

MS. MACIVOR: I've done these before, verifications

where -- and I've actually been a member of a settlement where

I had to provide such proof. And basically what was accepted

and how I at least envisioned it is if someone was a user,

let's use your Honor's example of someone at a college, all

they would have to do is get something from the college saying

this is the phone number that was used during the person's, you

know, residence at Boston University.

So it didn't have to be a business card. It didn't

have to be something formal. A letter -- like I myself

provided a note from someone whose phone I used. So that's

what I was thinking of, and I think that type of thing can be

easily addressed. But that's what I was thinking of. Feel

free to chime in, anyone else, of the other lawyers.

MR. BECKER: I think most of the users that we're

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probably going to be talking about aren't going to fall in the

example of a common dorm room phone number. It would likely be

someone that lives in a house and uses that phone number that

submitted the claim. 

And my daughter submits it instead of me, and she's a

user of that line. And she'll have substantially more access

to the actual evidence she would need than, say, 20 people on a

dorm room floor. With respect to that issue --

THE COURT: In that situation, Mr. Becker, does your

daughter have to ask you to submit some verification that you

are, in fact, the owner?

MR. BECKER: No. She would be able to submit

documents. She could ask me for a phone bill that shows that

this is the phone number actually associated with that address

and she had access to receive that. 

That would show, as a user, documentation's been

presented that shows this is connected with that phone number

as opposed to someone who randomly sat on the computer, put in

a phone number and can't receive that information at all.

Similarly, if you go to a phone bill -- or I'm sorry,

I think they've talked about a phone book type record online

that shows that phone number with that address is something

that's associated with that home, that would work as well.

There's -- there are a number of different ways to

receive the information that probably would be sufficient. I

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think the idea here is -- and I think we can put in to the

notices sent out -- the broad array of information that would

be available to them.

It isn't intended to filter them out. It's intended

to say there's some level of additional corroboration they

provided that shows that they're associated with that phone

number. The dorm room phone number issue, I think there's a

multitude of ways to go about that as well, but it won't

probably fall within the larger spectrum of those who submit.

THE COURT: And people who are submitting based on a

work phone or an employer's phone, then they would have to get

some sort of documentation from their employer to show that

they actually use that phone number?

Say somebody's given a cell phone as part of their

job, and it's -- you know, it's their assigned cell phone.

They used it for a while while they were working, and then they

quit that job, so they give the phone back. Now that person

has to go back to their former employer and get some sort of a

bill from their employer to show that they were a user of that

phone?

MR. McCUE: Your Honor, this is Matthew McCue

speaking. I mean, that's one way to do it, but, you know, what

I would like to see, you know, from my perspective is to make

it as easy as possible for people to provide verification.

So, I -- you know, we're talking here about ideas

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about how to deal with this. But from my perspective, I would

like it to have -- be less burdensome for consumers doing that.

A letter explaining that this was my cell phone number from X

to Y and was my work number and I don't own it anymore, I mean,

I personally think that that would be fine.

THE COURT: You would accept that?

MR. McCUE: I would, but I haven't discussed this with

defense counsel. But, you know, the importance to me is that

the consumer respond with an explanation, a verification, but

it be as less burdensome as possible so that people who have

valid claims can do this very easily.

MR. BECKER: I don't disagree with Mr. McCue. I think

that the idea here is not to create a substantial burden for

individuals. That would alleviate the issue that you raised of

somebody that was in a dorm.

I mean, if, we, as the cruise lines, or the

administrator want to do further verification, if we don't want

to accept it as it's written, we can incur that additional work

to do so. 

But if someone's going to send a letter saying I

worked at this place and this was the number that I had,

putting aside whether -- I think that probably could be

sufficient.

THE COURT: How do you know that person isn't making

it up? Because these are people that you're already suspecting

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of engaging in fraud.

MR. BECKER: Right.

THE COURT: So how -- how would you know that this is

not somebody who is going to make -- just write a letter

saying, yep, that was my work form. My work --

MR. McCUE: Your Honor, this is Matthew McCue

speaking. And you're right, and this is why we're here.

You know, and I also would remind the Court that we're

not -- we're not saying that certain claims are definitely

fraudulent. We're saying that there's a, you know, suspicion

that there's a need for follow-up verification. There's a

suspicion of fraud.

As an example, someone writes in and says, you know,

hey, this was my cell phone from my employer. You know, if the

cruise lines want to object to that, you know, I would

personally say let's look into it further, let's, you know --

let's call the employer, you know, does Joe Jones work there.

We can do follow-up, you know --

MR. BECKER: That's --

MR. McCUE: -- more inquiry.

But I doubt, your Honor, that there's going to be much

fighting about this. The important thing is that consumers are

responding and verifying their connection to these numbers.

That, to me, is the real goal.

MS. MACIVOR: Catherine Macivor, your Honor. I think

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another thing that could easily be done is if that arose -- and

I think it would be unusual -- you can always go to the

database. And if there are 20 people claiming something from

work number, I think that that would come out upon the letter,

and that would be rather easy to verify. And then that might

be subject to a challenge. But I don't think we're going to

get a lot of those.

The whole point of this is to just, you know, weed out

the people who were, as your Honor said the other day, game the

system and not to exclude bonafide claims.

MR. BECKER: Part of the reason I think that Mr. McCue

had suggested -- and we agree -- that we begin the filtering

process from everyone in the notice class from one call up is

because the other group of individuals who had received actual

notice had been vetted and verified and by KCC.

And so to your point, the individuals who we're

talking about right now have literally only submitted

information through the portal saying this is my phone number,

here's my address. If they begin the process of actually

giving us a letter explaining how their relationship to that

address was or the phone bill, what not, most of those claims

that come back, a substantial majority of them likely are going

to be on their face perfectly fine.

If there are certain ones that we have issues with,

the protocol would have us provide those to Mr. McCue, attempt

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to address those with him go, back to the administrator on the

limited number that remain, to have those verified similar to

the way the actual notice ones have been.

I think the thought here would be once we go through

this process, a small population of the remaining claims that

come back here would actually need to be verified further. We

didn't do that on, you know, 60 million on the front end or two

and a half million on the front end, but it makes sense to, you

know, go through the further steps as we proceed.

THE COURT: Remind me again why it is that there is

such a large number of people in the database that we don't

know whether or not for sure were actually called as part of

Mr. Charvat's campaign?

MR. McCUE: Yes, your Honor. Let me just back up on

that issue. The database we have is from Travel Services which

was a marketing entity.

We -- Mr. Charvat was called a number of times. So we

knew from the campaigns that he was located in, which of those

campaigns were cruise calls. So was that -- those were

isolated, and those folks got direct notice.

That left a very large database of other phone

numbers. But the contention was that travel services was

calling for condos as well as cruises. So then the issue was,

well, how do you know which is which? The cruise -- so as part

of the settlement, we -- plaintiffs insisted that people be

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given a right to participate in the settlement even if they

weren't in the Charvat -- the exact same Charvat campaigns, and

that's why we set up the portal requiring people to attest that

not only is it their number, that they recall getting cruise

defendant-related calls.

THE COURT: So in theory, it's possible that everyone

who submitted a claim except for the 50,608 people who were

direct notice claimants received a condo call and not a cruise

call, in theory. 

MR. BECKER: And part of our compromise in this case

was to not challenge every single call based upon the substance

of the recording they did or didn't receive towards our

marketing group, that's correct. 

It would be too expensive and a much more different

analysis if we were trying to challenge an individuals at a

station that they got a cruise-related call. So we agreed to

make everybody that received a call part of the overall class

and did not challenge that on that basis.

MR. McCUE: And, your Honor, that was a hotly

contested issue. From our perspective, the opposite is true,

that it's much more likely that the vast majority of these

calls were cruise calls. 

But it was a disputed issue in trying to settle this

case on a broader basis than just the Charvat campaigns led us

to the idea of doing the portal and requiring people to attest

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under pains and penalties that they recalled getting a fake

cruise call.

THE COURT: Okay. Going back to the additional

resources required for the two approaches that are on the

table, the one that's being advocated for by KCC and the other,

which I understand to be supported by both the plaintiff side

and the defense side.

To start, is that latter statement correct, that the

plaintiff's proposal, the one that Mr. McCue defended in Court

last week, is supported by defense counsel as well?

MR. BECKER: It is.

MS. MACIVOR: Catherine Macivor. Yes, your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay. So, Mr. Cooper, this is where I was

hoping to get some information from you. I'd like to get an

idea of the relative merits of these two approaches in terms of

the additional resources that are going to be required.

Have you prepared any information along those lines?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, this is Phil Cooper from KCC.

I don't know specifically what level of information you're

looking for. We don't have anything formally. That is, we

don't have the process in place, and that will be required to

refine the numbers further.

But I can certainly speak to, you know, the reasoning

behind that was in our declaration and our position if that

would suit the Court.

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THE COURT: Let's start there. Why does KCC only want

to focus on people who submitted or I guess lines for which

three or more claims were submitted?

MR. BECKER: Can I just speak for one moment before we

go there just to clarify? I don't think it's lines for which

three or more claims were submitted, and I would like Mr. McCue

or Phil Cooper to clarify this.

I think the issue is claims where there are

multiple -- more than a certain number of claims submitted by

the same address or same IP address. So it's not that 15

people put in the same phone number. It's that one person may

have put in for 15 phone numbers.

THE COURT: Okay. And is that -- are we on the same

page with respect to that then, that in terms of the

potentially fraudulent claims, the focus is on the person or I

guess IP address, which is another question I'm going to have

probably for Mr. Cooper in a minute, not on multiple claims per

line?

MR. McCUE: Matthew McCue speaking. Your Honor, that

is correct. And, your Honor, I would like to correct what I

believe was my factual misstatement. KCC is recommending a

check at more than three, and I believe I said it was three, so

that's my --

THE COURT: So it would actually have to be four?

MR. McCUE: Correct.

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THE COURT: Okay. So Mr. Cooper, why is it that KCC

is making that recommendation?

MR. COOPER: This is Phil Cooper. Well, basically our

general assessment is that anything at three or below falls

under the purview of being likely to be within a household or

it's possible to be within a household. 

It's not unreasonable for a household to have three

different numbers that are being claimed when you think about

the population based upon just anecdotal general information.

However, when we look at the groupings of four plus,

we see a much broader range. We see much more compounded

instances of the same IP address filing against multiple

numbers. We see more commonality in the addresses where the

addresses are being manipulated to appear as if they are

different addresses rather than being actual unique people.

So, for example, adding apartment numbers to the end

of a street address that's a residential, whereas another

address, a farmhouse with somehow 16 claims with Apartment 2B

when it's clearly a one-floor farmhouse.

So we see this. This is sort of the defining line.

And early discussions that looked at that as a threshold. The

parties discussed different levels of I guess groupings. We

had a number of claims that will be submitted on the entity,

and we've looked at it from the perspective of an actual IP

address commonality and address variation commonality.

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One of the reasons why we've specifically asked to

have about a week on top of the time we're producing actually

to submit e-mails options (unintelligible) contrast -- 

THE COURT: I'm sorry, Mr. Cooper, could you slow down

just a little bit and then go back to the beginning of your

last statement. We're losing you.

MR. COOPER: Sure, no problem.

What I said last is that one of the reasons that in

our timeline we'd asked to have the extra time added is to

allow for us to adjudicate false positives that might be in

that group to make sure we -- we looked through it. 

And if there are any instances where, for example, the

IP address was recycled and just happened to be used again but

for clearly different people, we aren't including them

erroneously. 

And so we have different groups, and there won't be

overlap between the duplicates or the multiple submissions of

IP address and the populations that have multiple submissions

against, A, what we call an entity because it could be various

factors relating to the address and name that are common

(unintelligible) those groups. And the overlap between those

two populations is not 100 percent.

THE COURT: So Mr. Cooper, are you able to determine

whether IP addresses are associated with public computer

terminals, for example?

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MR. COOPER: No. 

THE COURT: Okay. 

MR. COOPER: We are not.

THE COURT: So there's no way that you could do any

sort of a threshold screen to make sure that an IP address with

50 claimants associated with it is not, you know, multiple

users at the public library who are spreading the word as they

are entering their information into the portals.

MR. COOPER: Not per se, but that is a part of our

analysis is that we look at whether or not the addresses being

used in accompaniment with the IP address have common factors

that lead them to be indicating a fraud. 

So when we do our review -- if we see 10 claims that

have very different addresses, all from the same IP address, we

would not necessarily be inclined to identify that as fraud.

That would be a situation where we may say that this appears to

be a situation of people using a recycled IP address or a

public library address. 

But if we look and we see something like an example I

was giving earlier, where the address has been enumerated.

It's all in the same city, but there are clearly different

variations on the same address made to look different. They're

submitted in rapid succession from an IP address and there's 20

of them, then it may be indicative of a situation we want to

remediate. 

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And we aren't denying those people, but we're asking

them in the proposed solution at least to provide some evidence

that they have the right to claim. So I think that that is

ultimately the line of what the parties and the Court have been

asking is how can we attempt to weed out fraudulent submissions

without denying valid claims?

THE COURT: And why not just go ahead and require

verification for all of the indirect notice claimants as the

parties are suggesting?

MR. COOPER: Well, we have no objective indication

that the claims that are filing for are one, two or even three

numbers are fraudulent. It's very common to see that, you

know, we would be getting these types of claims.

This volume is not disproportionate to what you might

see in a standard TCPA class action if you had an indirect

notice list. But obviously that wasn't the case here. It

wasn't a typical class and it's not a typical case.

However, there's not anything that would directly tell

us that someone filed simply because they're an indirect notice

recipient is a fraudulent claim or we would have inherited

identifying them as such because they did go through the

portal. They did provide an in-class phone number that was

part of the data, and they did certify, well, they wouldn't

have a claim on file.

THE COURT: And in terms of the additional time that

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it would take to review the verification documents for only the

group who had four or more claims as opposed to doing it for

everybody who submitted an indirect notice claim, how much

longer would it take?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, we -- I mean, it depends on

the route that's taken here, I think, whether or not the

defendant or counsel for the defendant and the parties are

reviewing the documentation or KCC is adjudicating. 

But also it's going to be highly contingent upon the

volume of responses and the method of response as well. If

people choose to mail all their materials in, that's a longer

physical process than if they choose to go online and submit

using the claim number we've given them clearly identifying

who's submitting the proof, what the proof is.

If we end up sending it to more people, the odds are

that the volume of response is going to be larger. It's just

sort of a unified numbers game when it comes to how long it

will take. It's going to depend entirely on the volume of the

responses and the complexity of those responses.

THE COURT: As I understand it --

THE REPORTER: May I please ask Mr. Cooper to slow

down.

THE COURT: So Mr. Cooper, just for future reference,

our court reporter here in court has asked me to ask you again

to try to speak a little bit more slowly so that she can get a

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record of all this, okay?

MR. COOPER: Sure.

THE COURT: Good. Who was about to speak up?

Somebody on the phone.

MR. COOPER: Then, I'm sorry, I just wanted to clarify

that we would expect the volume of proof and the volume of

responses to be much higher if we were to send to all of the

indirect notice filers. 

Because it's more likely that people that are

legitimate claimants filing for only one number, which is

obviously the largest population at hand, that they would be

able to find proof and then would be forced to submit it

requiring more volume of review than if it was a smaller

population.

THE COURT: As I understand it, I guess it would be

KCC. KCC has not yet undertaken deduping the claims, so

finding the duplicative claims yet. Why not? Why not do that

before trying to deal with this fraud issue?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, this is Phil Cooper again.

We have reviewed preliminarily those numbers, but there's still

more to do, and part of that is because of this threshold

issue.

Because if, for example, five people claimed the same

phone number across claims and each of those five people also

filed two other claims and one of them filed three or four

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other claims, then that person or those people may shift in or

out of one of these threshold groups if we were to do their

duplicate submission first. But in reality, that probably

should be taken into consideration because it was a submission

attempt that exceeded a certain number.

The basic summary, the duplicate claims would be

removed before we do any final adjudication. But in terms of

understanding how many claims an individual entity submitted,

that information is still pertinent. We still want to make

sure that's being accounted for.

MS. MACIVOR: Your Honor, from the --

THE COURT: Go ahead, Ms. Macivor.

MS. MACIVOR: Yeah, Ms. Macivor here. So from our

perspective, when we were discussing this initially, we felt it

was important to identify and eliminate the fraudulent claims

first before that was done, and that was important. 

So that's what we were discussing with the settlement

administrator, and that's why we were asked whether we wanted

that done. And I didn't want a number on that because it's

more important to weed out the fraudulent claims first.

MR. BECKER: I think also adding to that, Judge, when

the discussion became does it make sense to cut the clean line

at the notice class, the whole -- I believe -- and correct me

if I'm wrong -- the concept of needing to deduplicate, do a lot

of this analysis would cost a lot more money on KCC's part to

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pull out IP numbers and look at the duplications, it becomes a

non-issue. 

Because if you're sending notice out to everybody,

regardless of whether the IP address was there or the phone

numbers were from the same unit, they're all going to be asked

to submit information at that point. 

And when that information comes in, it's

administratively filtered and reviewed by the parties, it makes

it unnecessary right now, I believe, for the expense to be

incurred, this issue of IP addresses and everything else.

Everyone's going to be asked to submit something, so why incur

that cost right now?

THE COURT: Has anyone, either the attorneys or the

administrator done any sort of rough calculation to get an idea

of what the rate of claim exclusion as a result of this process

would have to be in order to take this from being a pro rata

case for class members to being a non pro rata case? 

Right, so the number of claimants impacts whether or

not the class members are getting their distribution on a pro

rata basis or whether they're getting the original, I guess,

$300 per call.

So I guess my first question is if this were limited

to the direct notice people, who were the 50,000 odd people,

would they still get a pro rata distribution?

MR. BECKER: Yes.

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THE COURT: Okay. So we're not in a situation where

the degree to which people are excluded crosses that line.

MR. BECKER: I believe that's correct, Judge.

THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Becker believes that's correct.

Do the others on the phone believe that's correct?

MR. McCUE: Yes, your Honor.

MS. MACIVOR: Yes, your Honor. Ms. Macivor here.

MR. COOPER: Yes. This is Phil Cooper. We also agree

at KCC.

THE COURT: Okay. Would it -- and I suppose there's

no real way to kind of quantify the correlation at this point

between the percentage of excluded claims and the impact it has

on the recovery for individual class members. Let me --

MR. McCUE: Your Honor? 

THE COURT: Yes. 

MR. McCUE: This is Matthew McCue, plaintiff, your

Honor.

THE COURT: Go ahead.

MR. McCUE: You're sharing the same struggle I am,

frankly, in terms of, number one, it's our goal to eradicate

fraud in the process. It's the hope that if we take out fraud,

the individual take of each valid claim will go up. 

And the risk of -- the risk is that you spend money by

taking out the fraud, and trying to balance the two is really

the struggle that I frankly brought this motion to your

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attention to get your guidance on.

It's my belief that taking out the fraud will increase

the claim -- the claim number of valid claims, but there is an

element of uncertainty here because we just don't know what's

going to happen.

THE COURT: In terms of the logistics, to shift gears

for a moment, you've been talking about having people upload

verification through the portal.

Is there a way logistically that you could do this

where people can take a photograph of their phone bill with

their phone and then maybe text it someplace or otherwise send

it to the administrator since a lot of people don't have access

to scanners or, you know, actual PCs as opposed to their phone? 

I assume there's some sort of a text like a phone

number or an e-mail address where things could be sent so that

somebody could just take a photo of their documentation and

send it.

MR. McCUE: Yes, your Honor. This morning my daughter

sent me by text her New York state driver's license and I saved

it as a pdf and send it to my accountant. I think there's a

way to do that that's fairly simple. But Phil Cooper would be

best to address that.

THE COURT: I'm certain it's technologically possible

because I take photos of things and send it around. But I

don't know that there's been any e-mail address or phone number

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set up for this purpose thus far.

MR. BECKER: There were claims that came in --

Mr. Cooper can clarify. Actually Mr. Cooper can't clarify. I

believe there was an ability to submit claims by e-mail. I'm

not sure.

THE COURT: Mr. Cooper, can people submit their

verification under your scenario by text or e-mail to KCC?

MR. COOPER: This is Phil Cooper. Your Honor, the way

that this process is envisioned, there is an e-mail address

that's listed on the outbound notice. It's not currently in

place, but it will be in place.

So that is a practical solution. It certainly isn't

the most efficient way to process, but it's not problematic for

us to do, and it's not uncommon to have people e-mailing

something like a picture. So yes, the answer is that could be

done.

MR. BECKER: And to that end, the way that I envision

this working obviously with the guidance of KCC would be that

an individual could take a screenshot showing their phone

number on their phone, a bill, a business card, whatever else

we decide in the broad panoply of options that could be sent by

e-mail or through the portal that will end up in a common place

where we could then on a rolling basis begin going through them

approve, approve, approve or flag one, if it needs further

analysis, either through the parties' mutual agreement to

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approve it or through KCC. And that would give us the most

effective, time efficient way to go about it as they come in

and approve on a rolling basis.

THE COURT: Okay. So I do think that that option goes

partway towards alleviating my concern about discouraging

legitimate claimants from participating in this verification

process because it's just a hassle. You have to locate

something. 

You have to scan it. You have to, you know, send it

off. If you can just send it from your phone, at least it's a

little bit more convenient for just the way people live their

lives now.

The other practical concern that I have had is the

concern that people receiving this request for additional

information will be wary of providing it because things like

phone bills tend to have other personal information on them

other than just here's my name, here's the phone number.

So it has their call log, for example, of other people

that they're calling, which people might consider to be, you

know, personal that they don't want to share. You know, their

account number for their -- for their service they might be

hesitant to share.

As it was, I know that the court received several

inquiries when notice went out in this case regarding whether

or not this was a real thing or a scam and should people really

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be sending their personal information to this portal. 

I imagine counsel and the administrator received

similar inquiries, but we certainly received a not

insubstantial amount. Not 6 million, but a fair number.

So I would imagine some people might be hesitant to

provide the verification. I would suggest perhaps including in

the notice some sort of statement that any additional personal

information that's submitted in response or any personal

information submitted by a settlement class member may only be

used for purposes of administering the settlement or for

purposes of this action, something that makes it clear that by

order of the Court, the parties would not be able to use this

for any other purpose, especially since presumably you're

dealing with people who think that the defendants are those

annoying telemarketers who call them all the time and are using

their personal information as is, if you assume that's the

people we're dealing with.

So I think two things need to happen logistically to

eliminate some of the concerns that I have. One is the notice

be revised to include some sort of formal statement to that

effect, that the parties and the settlement administrator are

prohibited by Court order from using the personal information

submitted in connection with the claim for any purpose

unrelated to the -- I would say administration of the

settlement. But I don't know if counsel would consider that

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too narrow in the case that this thing fell through. But I

think that would be the one that would probably be the most

fair warning.

And then second, I think allowing or making it clear

that people don't have to go back to the online portal in order

to upload verification information, but can send it as long as

they have, I guess, their claim number, that they can send it

by e-mail or text, a photograph of the documentation to the

administrator.

I think that would alleviate some of my concerns about

legitimate claimants being unnecessarily discouraged here.

MR. McCUE: I agree, your Honor. That's Matthew

McCue. I agree with all those suggestions.

THE COURT: With that said, it is difficult for me

otherwise to find a compelling reason here to not go with the

approach that the parties are supporting of asking for

verification for all of the indirect notice claims. I

appreciate that. 

That's going to result in a large number of people

that don't have any indicia of fraud at this point having to go

through these extra steps, but at least the burden will be the

same for all of the people in that category. And frankly, I'm

not sure, given the number of claimants here, that it's really

fair to assume that you're going to catch more fraud by

focusing on the people who have four or more claims as opposed

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to the people who are savvier fraudsters who just came up with

a better way of submitting claims.

Especially since the notice that went out tells people

that submitting three or more claims would be considered an

indicia of fraud, a lot of people are clever enough to read

that and figure out, one, now they know wait a minute, fraud,

this is something I hadn't really thought about I could do and

just come up with a workaround.

So it strikes me as a more fair approach to simply

have this apply to everybody, and I haven't yet heard a

compelling resource or cost argument from KCC as to why this is

going to, you know, impact the overall settlement and perhaps,

you know, put this into the category of something that the

parties didn't anticipate when they negotiated the settlement

such that we started questioning the settlement itself.

The timeline. So the parties submitted a proposed

revised timeline along with the status report that I believe

assumes I adopted their approach and not the administrator's.

Is that fair to say?

MR. McCUE: That's correct, your Honor. The draft

order we submitted did -- of course, we could have changed it

if you wanted us to, but that's how we set up the order subject

to those general -- the one-sixth that I brought to your

attention that KCC needs 17 days to get the e-mail out, not 10

days.

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And then you had raised, your Honor -- and I agree --

that having the final approval hearing on the Friday after the

4th of July is not good. So that would be changed as well.

THE COURT: The preliminary approval order and I think

the notice explains the challenge procedure and how it works.

Is this additional procedure going to conflict with

what people have already been told is the process for the

parties to challenge claims?

MS. MACIVOR: No, your Honor. This is Catherine

Macivor. We're planning on following the same one.

MR. McCUE: Your Honor, would it be helpful -- this is

Matthew McCue speaking. Would it be helpful to the Court if we

submitted a revised order that reflected some of the

discussions that we had today?

THE COURT: Yes, as well as I'd like to see a revised

notice to make sure it has that other language in it about the

parties being limited in their use of the information.

MR. McCUE: Okay.

MR. HILTON: Your Honor, this is Jonathan Hilton for

Evan Shelton, if I may. I just wanted to say that assuming

that we -- that the Court does decide to send notice of all of

the indirect claimants to have them submit additional

documentation, I would just ask that the parties and the Court

consider the propriety of sending a reminder e-mail, just have

one additional round of reminder e-mails go out in case

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somebody misses the first initial e-mail where it goes to spam

or a person just forgets so that we can keep as many legitimate

claims as possible.

THE COURT: I think that's fair. I think a reminder

e-mail would make sense. We'll need to build that into the

timeline to be reflected in the order.

One other thought is I don't know --

MS. MACIVOR: That would be an additional cost,

though.

THE COURT: It's an additional --

MR. BURKE: This is Alex -- this is Alex Burke. I

think she'll have an idea of what it costs to send out an

e-mail notice, and my understanding is it's like $50,000.

MS. MACIVOR: Yeah, I recall the estimate being

56,000. So that would push -- with both notices, it would push

it over 100,000.

THE COURT: Why does it cost 50,000 to send a reminder

e-mail? Isn't it just a matter of sending pretty much the

prior e-mail with a header that says "as a reminder"? Explain

to me why that's an overly simplistic view.

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, this is Phil Cooper at KCC.

The e-mail campaigns have a unified pricing, so that's

basically the answer why. It's like sending a postcard. It's

just a different rate than doing so. So if you send 50,000

e-mails two times, you pay for the price of sending 100,000

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e-mails.

THE COURT: That is because that's KCC's negotiated

rate as --

MR. COOPER: Yeah, that is just the rate that it costs

for sending out the e-mails priced that way.

MR. BECKER: Is there any cost savings associated with

once you've done it the first time and compiled those e-mail

addresses and knowing you're going to do it again, is there any

way to save on that?

MR. COOPER: It's very minimal. The savings are

entirely just upon the spec of writing up the notice here,

developing a language. You save a few hours of the development

time and that's it. It's not -- there's no savings on the

unitized rates.

THE COURT: Is that because the cost to KCC of doing

it is the same, or is it because that's just your billing

practice?

MR. COOPER: The cost is the same to us regardless of

whether or not we've done the campaign -- the campaign of the

same people before. We don't give any different pricing.

THE COURT: Because I'm thinking if this were a

campaign where you were sending out postcards, of course, you

would have to pay for the paper and the postage costs

regardless of whether you had done it before.

But for e-mail, the cost is sort of the actual I guess

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cost of the process here is less, I would think. And if the is

that's just what your rates are and that's what you've

negotiated, that's a fair answer.

MR. COOPER: I mean --

THE COURT: I would accept it. I don't know. You

might be able to work around it. But if your answer is just

that's what we charge, then that's fine. But I guess I'm

wondering if the expense goes down.

MR. COOPER: The expense does not change based upon

the number of campaigns. Unfortunately, that's just the

pricing system that's in place.

I mean, I can certainly inquire more about what

options are available, but that's not a department that I'm

directly involved in. So I can't speak to it with any

authority.

THE COURT: Okay. Hearing that it would cost $50,000

to do a reminder e-mail, what do the parties think about that?

MR. BECKER: I think that we don't want to eat away at

additional money that comes into the fund for class members by

spending $50,000 to send another e-mail if that's going to be a

substantial amount of money that could go to the class instead.

I think it's going to be a weighing of the two issues,

your Honor. I think it might be helpful to talk to KCC to see

if there's a way to save on that, but we obviously don't want

to, you know, waste additional funds if it's not a necessary

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step to be taken.

THE COURT: How much is KCC getting paid as class

administrator?

MR. BECKER: I don't have the estimate in front of me.

MR. McCUE: You're Honor, it's -- we don't have a

final bill because, of course, it depends upon --

THE COURT: I understand.

MR. McCUE: I'm sorry, your Honor, this is Matthew

McCue.

It's expensive. It's probably $3 million. From the

plaintiff's perspective, your Honor, I think it's a commonsense

suggestion, and I think it would be helpful to encourage valid

claimants to submit. And I think we should figure out a way to

pay for it.

THE COURT: I tend to agree, and I would like the

parties to talk to KCC about this. I don't know, but I've had

other settlements where KCC has sought to be a settlement

administrator. 

But certainly in considering whether to approve

settlements with an administrator which I think is not willing

to be flexible on something like this, I might have to make a

mental note. This strikes me as an amount of money that

perhaps the parties and the administrator can talk about so it

has a minimal impact.

That said, I appreciate that KCC has taken on a huge

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undertaking. I've already said that I'm inclined to adopt an

approach that's going to require more of their time and effort

and make it a harder job for them. So I'm certainly aware of

that and sensitive to that.

However, I think they're also getting paid a lot. So

there should be a way that the parties and KCC can work this

out so it has minimal impact on the class. But I do think a

reminder e-mail should be built into the process.

We need to talk about another date for the final

approval hearing in light of where we are on the new schedule.

So we're going to be into I guess the end of June in order to

get all of the final summary documents relating to the

settlement. It looks like June 25th is one of the last dates

that we're looking at.

For the reasons articulated by our objector, I agree

that July 6th is not a great day for this. I don't want to

further discourage anybody by putting it on a date that will

make them or their lawyers have a harder time getting here.

Frankly, I suspect I may not be sitting on July 6th to hear

this.

Unfortunately, I do have jury trials scheduled at this

point for the week of July 9th and the week of July 15th. And

I would like to make sure I set this for a date where I can set

aside a fairly significant amount of time to fully hear any

objections on this.

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Is there any reason that it would be prejudicial to

any of the interested parties if the final approval hearing

were pushed to the week of July 23rd?

MR. McCUE: Fine for plaintiff, your Honor.

MS. MACIVOR: No, your Honor. Catherine Macivor.

MR. BECKER: That works for Carnival.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. HILTON: Jonathan Hilton for Objector Shelton.

That's fine.

THE COURT: Okay. Based upon the parties' experiences

with these things, is there a day of the week that works --

tends to work better in terms of making sure that people are

able to show up if they want to show up?

MR. BECKER: I believe that traveling counsel, it's

typically better if it's a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

Matt, Cathy, would you agree?

MR. McCUE: Yeah, I would agree.

MS. MACIVOR: I would agree, Catherine Macivor.

THE COURT: I think we previously set it for an 11:00

o'clock time perhaps? Let me look at the order and see what I

can do.

Yes, we previously set it for an 11:00 o'clock time.

Let's see. I would be able to do it on the 24th, 25th, 26th, I

believe. That's a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of that week

of July 23rd. It looks like I can do it at 11:00 o'clock on

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any of those days.

Hopefully this is not a hearing that would take more

than a couple of hours. I think we probably have about three

objectors who have -- that I'm aware of who have indicated a

desire to come and be involved in the hearing. There may be

others. So for scheduling for the revised proposed order that

the parties are working on, let's go with a new fairness

hearing date of July 24th at 11:00 a.m.

MR. McCUE: That works, your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay. So what I need from the parties is

a revised order as well as a revised form of notice that's

going to be sent out, and the parties may need to talk a little

bit about that. 

Would I be able to likely get that from the parties in

the next 24 hours or so --

MR. McCUE: Yes, your Honor.

THE COURT: -- so that we can get this

(unintelligible)? I am going to -- officially going to grant

the request for the follow-up documentation. This will go to

all of the indirect notice claimants, and this should provide

for the items that I mentioned on the record as well as the

reminder e-mail, and the parties are going to try to work out a

way so that it doesn't eat into the settlement fund.

The last sort of substantive issue, this was something

I had mentioned in passing when the parties were here last

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week, which is the possibility that this additional process

might lead to additional objections.

In looking at the order, the order certainly lays out

a challenge procedure. This isn't really a challenge

procedure. This is something in addition, sort of a midway

step between the initial submission and actually providing for

challenges.

Is there any -- anyone, including Mr. Hilton, who

wants to argue for why some additional opportunity for

settlement class members to object should be allowed in light

of this additional procedure?

MR. McCUE: Your Honor, Matthew McCue. From the

plaintiff's perspective, I do think it's reasonable to allow

people to object to what we're proposing.

THE COURT: Okay. 

MR. HILTON: Your Honor, this is Jonathan Hilton. I

also agree. If we're going to require additional documentation

for what could potentially be a very large payout, I think it

makes sense to allow people an additional opportunity to

object.

MR. BECKER: I would think it's important. However,

if we're going to go down that road and cognizant of the fact

that there is counsel present and objected heartily at the last

hearing, if we're going to go down that road, the objection

substance should be limited to what's actually taking place

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here.

We shouldn't look at this as a way to reopen

objections that could have been posed timely prior to this.

THE COURT: So here's my concern about that, which is

that we now have a public statement that's going to be sent to

people where the Court and the parties are acknowledging that

the settlement administrator believes there's an indicia of

substantial fraud in connection with the claims process.

As a legitimate settlement class member, that might be

something that I want to complain about or amend my prior

objection to complain about or just in general weigh in on as

some new information that's out there that I didn't know before

that may provide a basis for me to challenge the settlement.

Any thoughts from the parties on that?

MR. McCUE: I think that's fair, your Honor.

THE COURT: Is there going to be a timeline built into

the order for that to happen? Is this going to happen within

the same 30-day window that they have to submit their

verification, and within that same window, if they have any

additional basis for an objection, they would have to submit it

within that same time frame?

MR. McCUE: That would be my sense, your Honor.

That's what we typically do with objections in claims is we run

them the time frame to run at the same time. So I would

envision that as well.

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MR. BECKER: Tying them together would be consistent

with what we did earlier in this case to tie the claim to the

objection period.

THE COURT: I would not be opposed, I don't think, to

the parties indicating in some way that -- well, one, you

should definitely tell people if you objected previously, you

don't have to object again so that you don't have multiple

people submitting the same objection.

I don't know if there is an easy way to limit

objections to concerns arising out of the more recent

developments, the new process and the notice of it that's going

out. That may be too fine of a detail to try to -- to try to

work into this.

From what I can tell, the majority of the objections

fall into three basic categories. The lawyers are getting paid

too much, the representative class member's getting paid too

much, and there was a bait and switch here. You told me I was

going to get $900 and now I'm getting four.

I think those are -- those are at least the objections

that I've seen for the most part. I don't know if the parties

think otherwise or there are other types of objections.

MR. BECKER: Very minimal other objections not of the

same substance that you're talking about. Those are the three

primary objections you're seeing across the spectrum.

THE COURT: And frankly, I could see how again

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receiving notice that the class administrator believes there's

indicia of substantial fraud could support any of those three

objections and may want to be cited by objectors as an

additional reason why class plaintiff's getting paid too much,

lawyers are getting paid too much, and it's unfair that their

recovery is being reduced.

So I think I've talked myself into not limiting --

trying to put an artificial limit on the type of objection that

they can raise.

MR. BECKER: For purposes of providing any putative

class member with, you know, the fairest way to address the

issues to the Court, I would agree.

THE COURT: Any others on the phone want to weigh in

on that issue?

MR. McCUE: Matthew McCue, your Honor, and all I would

point out is the objections about we're not getting paid

enough. That's exactly why we're here is we're trying to

eliminate as much fraud from this process as possible to make

sure that people who have valid claims get as much as they can.

THE COURT: Yes, I understand that. I'm not sure that

the people who are getting this e-mail will appreciate that, at

least not at first glance.

Okay. But let us -- they should have notice that they

can supplement objections, file new objections, no need to

repeat any objection that's already been submitted.

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MR. BECKER: Very good, Judge. So we'll speak with

KCC, and we'll revert to your e-mail address, I believe the

chambers e-mail address, the updated notice and the updated

process timeline.

THE COURT: Okay. So let's -- if we're able to do

that within the next 24 hours -- if the parties are delayed

beyond that, just call chambers and let us know.

As I think the parties can tell from how I've

approached this, I'd rather you take a little bit of extra time

to make sure that you've thought everything through and gotten

on the same page rather than to rush through it, especially

since we're moving the final approval hearing anyway. So I'd

rather try to address concerns on the front end, if we can.

MR. BECKER: Very good, Judge.

THE COURT: Anything else for today? Anything from

anyone on the phone?

MR. McCUE: That's it, your Honor. Thank you for your

time.

THE COURT: Okay. And thank you to Mr. Cooper for

joining us and answering my questions, including my pointed

questions about how much you and your employer are getting

paid.

I can let you know I'm in no way disparaging the work

that you've done. I hope that was clear. I know it's a tough

job, and this is an unusual settlement to administrator.

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MR. COOPER: Of course, your Honor. We appreciate

that very much.

THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Becker.

MR. BECKER: Thank you, Judge.

THE COURT: Okay. I think we are adjourned. I'll

look for your order.

MR. COOPER: Thank you, your Honor.

MS. MACIVOR: Thank you, your Honor.

MR. McCUE: Thank you, your Honor.

MR. HILTON: Thank you.

(Concluded at 2:28 p.m.)

* * * * * * * * * * 

C E R T I F I C A T E 

I certify that the foregoing is a correct transcript of the 

record of proceedings in the above-entitled matter. 

/s/ LISA H. BREITER__________________ April 20, 2018 

LISA H. BREITER, CSR, RMR, CRR 

Official Court Reporter 

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