A federal judge in San Francisco on Friday awarded Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro more than $31 million in attorneys’ fees stemming from its work in a long-running antitrust fight over optical disk drives.
The award comes 11 years after plaintiffs represented by Hagens Berman first sued Hitachi, LG Electronics, Sony Corp and others, accusing them of colluding in an effort to inflate ODD prices in the US market, reported Reuters.
Since then, Hagens Berman’s clients, US consumers who purchased products that had ODDs, known as indirect purchaser plaintiffs in the case — have struck three settlements with defendant companies, totaling $205 million. For those three settlements, the law firm was awarded a cumulative $47.78 million in fees.
The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals in 2020 vacated the fee awards, finding that the district court needed to better explain why Hagens Berman should have received fees that exceeded amounts it was supposed to receive under the bid it filed years ago to become class counsel.
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