Opinion ID: 769936
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Calculation of Class Counsel's Fees

Text: 30 We review for abuse of discretion a district court's method of calculating an award of attorney fees. See Hanlon, 150 F.3d at 1029. Havird contends the district court's final $1,000,000 fee award was excessive because it compensated class counsel for hours they had already been compensated for by the district court's earlier award of attorney fees when the U.S. West settlement was approved. At the time of that earlier award, Kolodny & Pressman, Miller Faucher, and Hagens & Berman, claimed they had expended 3,096.15; 3,137.31; and 229.5 hours on the case, respectively. The district court then awarded class counsel attorney fees in the sum of $923,390.97. This award was computed based on 25 percent of the U.S. West settlement's value. 31 After the AirTouch settlement, Kolodny & Pressman and Miller Faucher claimed they expended 3,835.75 and 3,773 hours on the entire litigation, respectively. The district court used the total hours class counsel spent on the entire litigation to determine a lodestar value of $ 1,777,449.50 for the entire case. The court then subtracted its previous award of $923,390.97, leaving a balance of $854,058.60. Then, in its May 4, 1999 order reconsidering the attorney fee award, the district court applied a multiplier of 1.082 to the cumulative lodestar value of $1,777,449.50 to get an adjusted cumulative lodestar value of $1,923,395.80. When the previous award was subtracted, the remaining balance was $1,000,004.90. Because class counsel had requested only $1,000,000, which was the agreed-upon limit to which the defendant would not object, the district court awarded that amount. 32 Havird contends that instead of calculating the lodestar value using the number of hours class counsel spent on the entire litigation, the district court should have limited its calculation to the number of hours class counsel spent on the litigation following approval of the U.S. West settlement. We disagree. Havird assumes that the district court's 25 percent attorney fee award at the time of the earlier U.S. West settlement compensated class counsel for all the hours they had spent on the litigation up to that time. The district court,however, did not determine that the attorney fee award at the time of the U.S. West settlement was to compensate class counsel for all the hours they had spent on the case to that point. By later calculating the lodestar value for the entire case and then subtracting the amount class counsel had previously been paid, the district court ensured that the attorney fee award after the settlement with AirTouch only included those hours that class counsel had not been compensated for by the earlier attorney fee award. 6 The district court did not err in its calculation of the final attorney fee award.