A federal judge has approved $57.4 million in attorney fees for lawyers involved in one of several sprawling class actions accusing big players in the poultry industry of fixing chicken prices.
The law firms had sought $60 million in fees.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin issued an opinion on the matter Oct. 7, finalizing fees for attorneys who represented consumers and other “end users” of chicken. That consolidated legal action is distinct from litigation on behalf of so-called “direct purchasers,” a group that includes wholesalers, supermarkets and other retailers.
U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin
Since 2016, chicken producers have defended themselves against several antitrust lawsuits incorporating similar allegations. The lawsuits claimed producers boosted profits by sharing internal data from a publication called Agri Stats, suppressing supply in order to elevate prices, even as the price of raising birds, such as feed costs, dropped. The U.S. Department of Justice separately initiated its own proceedings in the matter.
Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson reached a $155 million settlement in early 2021 with direct purchasers, dwarfing a $15 million settlement smaller producers reached in similar litigation. Later that year, Pilgrim’s Pride asked Durkin to approve a $75.5 million settlement with end users, which joined with a $1 million settlement involving several entities under the Mar-Jac Poultry name. Other firms and settlement amounts are Fielddale, $1.7 million; Peco, $1.9 million; George’s, $1.9 million; and Tyson, $99 million.
The end users have been represented by attorneys Shana E. Scarlett, of the firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, of Berkeley, California, and Brent W. Johnson, of the firm of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, of Washington, D.C., along with other attorneys from those firms. In addition to incentive awards for named plaintiffs, the lawyers sought more than $60 million in fees, and $8.75 million more to reimburse them for the cost of pursuing the litigation; they told the judge their actual expenses exceeded $9 million.
According to Durkin, one of two objectors sought discovery related to the fee requests, following which he ordered disclosure about fee awards in other antitrust litigation and the firms’ agreements with named plaintiffs. That objector insisted the fee “request was ‘exorbitant’ and ‘substantially above-market,’ and demanded that ‘there must be consequences’ for such ‘selfish’ conduct.
But in this instance, Durkin said the “request here is well within the range of awards” the firms have earned since 2016.
“Appointed counsel invested massive resources of time and money when few other counsel expressed interest, with little assurance of success,” Durkin wrote. “No government investigation preceded the complaint in this case for appointed counsel to piggy-back. And plaintiffs have been opposed by many defendants, including a number of very large and well-funded corporations, which have retained some of the most prominent and sophisticated law firms in the United States.”
Durkin further said his 92-page motion denying motions to dismiss the end users’ complaint “was a relatively close call” and said the attorneys’ work “appears to have prompted the government investigations” leading to the criminal indictments and corporate plea deals that made settlements more likely.
Although Durkin approved the $8.75 million in expenses, he said the proper calculation is to pay 33% of the settlement fund, less the expenses and the incentive awards. That works out to $50,000 — an award of $2,000 for 24 named plaintiffs, noting those parties “spent at least 40 hours on the case” individually, and one award shared by a married couple.