Lawyers want $122.5 million of $490 settlement of case alleging Apple CEO Tim Cook defrauded shareholders
Attorneys from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Labaton Keller Sucharow who secured a $490 million settlement for Apple investors in a securities class action lawsuit are requesting a quarter of that amount in legal fees. They argue that the complexity of the case and the time invested warrant the hefty sum.
The firms filed a request with a federal judge in Oakland, California, seeking $122.5 million in compensation. This translates to roughly $3,100 per hour for the 65 lawyers and staffers who reportedly dedicated a combined 39,500 hours to the case.
Reuters:
Multiplying those hours by the professionals’ hourly rates would yield an award of about $27.8 million, they said, arguing that their much larger request is appropriate given their adversary was “the largest – and arguably one of the most powerful – companies on the planet.”
Lawyers involved in the case at Robbins Geller and Labaton and a spokesperson for Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The settlement resolves allegations that Apple CEO Tim Cook defrauded shareholders by concealing falling demand for iPhones in China. When Apple reduced its quarterly revenue forecast by as much as $9 billion in 2019, it was the first time since the iPhone’s launch that Apple had cut its revenue forecast. Apple denied the claims.
The firms’ $122.5 million request matches the benchmark of 25% of a class action settlement fund for attorney fee awards adopted by federal courts in California and elsewhere in the 9th Circuit. But courts there have sometimes pushed back at the 25% standard in so-called megafund cases where settlements exceed $100 million.
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MacDailyNews Take: What a scam.
As we wrote back in November 2020, “Both Cook and Luca could have thought, at the time of their statements, that China iPhone sales would continue and they might not have been able to foresee, even though it seems painfully obvious in hindsight, that a late rush of battery replacements would ensue in December just before the low-priced iPhone battery replacement program’s end date, negatively impacting sales of new iPhones.”
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