The private lawyers representing consumers in Google’s $700 million nationwide settlement over its Play app store said they plan to request up to $122.8 million in fees for their legal work leading up to the deal.
A coalition of states and the private attorneys announced the terms of the pact on Monday night in San Francisco federal court, including $70 million for the states and a $630 million fund to compensate consumers for claims that Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google overcharged them for apps.
U.S. District Judge James Donato will now weigh whether to approve the settlement and what fees to award to the consumer plaintiffs' law firms. The firms, including Bartlit Beck and Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer, told the judge on Monday that awarding them their full anticipated fee request would leave a fund of about $500 million for consumers.
Lawyers for the consumers declined to comment. The state plaintiffs said they will not take a position on the consumer lawyers' fees for now.
Google had no immediate comment on whether it would challenge any fee bid.
The consumer attorneys filed the nationwide antitrust class action in 2020, claiming Google monopolized Android app distribution and in-app payment services. The states later followed with a similar lawsuit, and the two groups agreed last year to pursue the antitrust claims in tandem.
Google did not admit or deny the allegations as part of Monday's settlement.
Ted Frank of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, who is known for challenging the terms of consumer settlements, said a $122 million fee award would be an “outrageous windfall” and his group would "very likely object if the fee number doesn’t come down by a material amount" when the lawyers' formal request is lodged.
Frank said the consumer lawyers were piggybacking on the coalition of state attorneys general who brought their own case. He noted that Donato ruled earlier this year that the private plaintiffs' lawsuit could not move ahead as a class action, severely limiting the value of their case.
In their joint filing on Monday, the states and consumer lawyers said they together spent hundreds of hours over a year negotiating the settlement. The private law firms spent millions of dollars pursuing the litigation, the filing showed.
An award of $122.8 million would amount to about 19% of the settlement fund, below a 25% benchmark for litigation in California and other states whose federal courts are covered by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Eligible consumers can get at least $2 from the deal, or more based on how much a person paid for apps on Google’s Play store.
Consumers will have a chance to object to the settlement or they can exclude themselves from it.
The case is In re Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:21-md-02981.
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