Opinion ID: 1349586
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Interim Fee Award

Text: In the spring of 2001, the District Court established procedures that would govern its consideration of the fee award due to Class Counsel. As an initial step, it required all Class Counsel to submit time and expense records to a court-appointed auditor and to a lawyer designated as Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel. The auditor, who was charged with determining which items of time and expense met previously established criteria for payment, reported that seventy-two law firms had performed 354,431.49 hours of compensable work and that a lodestar value of $101,076,658.54 was appropriate in view of their services. [14] Each law firm claiming to be Class Counsel then had to submit to Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel a fee presentation, which was to contain a litany of information relevant to the services rendered, including [a] summary of the professional time for which compensation or reimbursement is claimed ... and [v]erified copies of all pertinent time records which were maintained contemporaneously ... throughout this litigation.... (App. at 7733.) The seventy-two firms that provided their records to the auditor filed fee presentations with Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel, who, on February 15, 2002, submitted to the Court a thirty-volume compendium containing the fee presentations. On the same day, those same seventy-two firms filed a joint petition for attorneys' fees in which they requested a total of approximately $567 million from the four available funds. There were nine objectors to the joint petition, including Riepen. [15] Riepen argued that he should not have to pay an MDL assessment because he did not use PMC discovery, and he argued that the requested class fee was too high, given what he viewed as the low risk of non-compensation in the case. On March 4, 2002, the District Court entered an order permitting the objectors to request and, subject to court approval, to take limited discovery regarding the petition. Riepen participated in several discovery conferences, but did not seek any discovery. Other objectors deposed PMC lead counsel on subjects that included the details of the records submitted to Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel and the contributions of contract attorneys to the PMC's efforts. [16] Once discovery was complete, the District Court held a two-day hearing on the propriety of the fee award sought in the petition. The District Court ruled on the fee petition on October 2, 2002, in an order designated as PTO 2622. In re Diet Drugs Prods. Liab. Litig., Civ. Action No. 99-20593, 2002 WL 32154197 (E.D.Pa. Oct.3, 2002). Based on its findings that (1) [t]he PMC faced significant risk at the beginning of the litigation that the work they did would be unsuccessful and uncompensated, (2) [t]he discovery package created by the PMC ultimately paved the way for the class settlement and many individual settlements, and (3) the PMC conferred great benefits on all litigants in the MDL and state-coordinated litigation [and]... performed their duties with admirable skill, diligence, and efficiency, the Court awarded Class Counsel 6% of the recoveries by claimants whose actions were part of the MDL and 4% of the recoveries by claimants in coordinated state actions (the 6% & 4% Assessment). [17] Id. at . That entitled Class Counsel to a distribution of $76,861,455 from the MDL Fee and Cost Account. As to the fees to be drawn from the Settlement Accounts, the Court found it premature to perform a definitive ... analysis ... [because t]here is a significant amount of work still to be done ... in assisting the administration of the Settlement Agreement. Id. at . It concluded, however, that Class Counsel was entitled to a payment of almost $77 million $38,430,728 from the Fund A legal fees escrow account and the same amount from the Fund B legal fees escrow account. [18] Riepen and other objectors appealed, but we dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, holding that PTO 2622 was neither a final order nor a collateral order from which an appeal could be brought. Diet Drugs, 401 F.3d 143.