City of Westland Police and Fire Retirement System v. Metlife, Inc.
- Lewis Kaplan
- 1:12-cv-00256
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In City of Westland v. MetLife, Judge Kaplan ordered more detail before deciding counsel’s approximately $21 million fee request.
Plaintiff’s counsel must provide additional information supporting their approximately $21 million fee request; the fee application remained unresolved by this order.
What happened
City of Westland Police and Fire Retirement System v. Metlife, Inc. involved requests to approve a proposed class-action settlement and to award plaintiff’s lawyers approximately $21 million in fees. The lawyers supported their request with a calculation based on more than 20,000 hours of work by lawyers and other personnel.
The court found that the fee materials did not provide enough information to evaluate the request. The calculation used current hourly rates even though the work took place over eight to nine years, and it did not adequately explain how the hours were spent.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered plaintiff’s lawyers to provide historical hourly rates and hours for each person, work-category details, missing biographical information, and support for the reasonableness of the rates. The order did not decide the fee request or state whether the proposed settlement was approved.
The detailed version
- City of Westland Police and Fire Retirement System v. Metlife, Inc. · No. 1:12-cv-00256
- Lewis Kaplan
- Mar. 30, 2021
Background
The parties moved for approval of a proposed class-action settlement. Plaintiff’s counsel separately requested approximately $21 million in attorneys’ fees. To support the request, counsel submitted a lodestar calculation—a fee estimate based on the hours worked multiplied by hourly rates—covering 20,443 hours by 24 lawyers, unspecified numbers of paralegals, document clerks, and shareholder-relations personnel, and nine litigation-support personnel.
The court noted that the calculation used current hourly rates even though the work occurred over eight to nine years. The court stated that rates likely were lower when some of the work was performed, which could have overstated the nominal lodestar, although the delay in payment could appropriately be considered in setting fees. The court also found that the materials did not explain in sufficient detail how the more than 20,000 hours were spent.
Information Ordered
The court directed plaintiff’s counsel to provide:
- A revised lodestar spreadsheet showing, for each person, the hours worked at each hourly rate in effect when the work was performed, along with total hours and a blended historical hourly rate.
- An analysis of the work categories for which compensation was requested, including the hours spent in each category by each person and the lodestar for each category based on historical rates. The court identified categories used in another Southern District of New York case as potentially helpful but allowed counsel to use another approach.
- Biographical information for all people for whom compensation was requested.
- Evidence supporting the reasonableness of the hourly rates, including the timekeepers’ titles and roles, whether similar personnel are typically billed hourly to paying clients, their experience and work quality, and market rates for comparable professionals.
Disposition
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered plaintiff’s counsel to provide the additional information needed for the court to make an informed judgment on the fee application. The opinion does not state that the court approved or rejected the proposed settlement, and it does not state that the court granted or denied the fee request.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.