The lawyers behind a lawsuit accusing many of America's top universities of conspiring to artificially boost the price tag to attend college say they should be paid $95 million in fees to reward them for their work in securing settlements from 10 schools, to date.
The request was filed on April 29 in federal court in Chicago.
If granted, the request would give the lawyers claim to at least one-third of a pot of $285 million paid so far under deals with 10 of 17 schools targeted in the lawsuit.
The request for attorney fees comes at a midway point in the legal action that has continued in Chicago federal court since 2022.
At that time, plaintiffs' lawyers filed suit on behalf of 10 named plaintiffs and potentially a class of thousands more students who were enrolled at classes at 17 elite U.S. colleges and universities.
Schools targeted in the lawsuit included the University of Chicago; Brown University; Emory University; Johns Hopkins University; Columbia University; California Institute of Technology; Cornell; Dartmouth College; Duke University; Georgetown University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Northwestern University; Notre Dame; Penn; Rice; and Vanderbilt.
Lawyers bringing the lawsuit included those from the firms of Berger Montague P.C., of Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.; Gilbert Litigators & Counselors P.C., of New York; and Freedman Normand Friedland LLP, of New York and Miami.
The lawsuit generally accuses the elite schools of illegally colluding through a university consortium known as the 568 Group, which the complaint characterized as a "price-fixing cartel," to drive down student financial aid awards and artificially inflate the price paid by students to attend those schools.
U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, who is presiding over the case, has rebuffed efforts by the schools to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge has ruled plaintiffs had plausibly alleged the universities may have violated federal law by colluding on admission strategies to "not admit all students on a need-blind basis."
Following that ruling, 10 of the 17 defendant schools have agreed to settle, beginning with a $13.5 million payout from the University of Chicago.
Other schools that have reached settlement deals included: Brown ($19.5 million), Columbia ($24 million), Duke ($24 million), Emory, Yale ($18.5 million), Dartmouth ($33.75 million), Northwestern ($43.5 million), Rice ($33.75 million), and Vanderbilt ($55 million).
Collectively, the universities have agreed to pay $285 million.
Under those settlements, students who allegedly were harmed by the alleged collusion among the schools can be entitled to receive a prorated share of the settlement funds paid by the schools they attended. The amount received by those students will vary based on their circumstances, including the size of their financial aid awards and the amount of tuition they ultimately paid.
The litigation continues against the remaining seven defendant schools.
However, the plaintiffs' lawyers say their work to this point should entitle them to get paid from the settlements accrued to date.
"These Settlements are an excellent result both in absolute terms, considering the nearly the (sic) $284 million in cash, and given that litigation continues against seven non-settling Defendants...," the lawyers wrote in their motion. "The Settlements resulted from Settlement Class Counsel's determined efforts at every stage of this litigation. If Settlement Class Counsel had not initiated and prosecuted this case, and then secured these Settlements in this complex matter, the Settlement Class may have had to wait years for any money - and may have received nothing at all."
The lawyers note more than 40,000 potential class member students have signed up to receive updates about the settlements and the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs lawyers assert they have amassed more than $70 million in uncompensated time and have racked up more than $3 million in costs.
No response has been filed to the motion for fees, and it is not known if any of the universities may oppose the motion.
Attorneys seeking to be paid through the motion for fees include: Robert D. Gilbert, Elpidio Villarreal, Robert S. Raymar, David Copeland and Natasha Zaslove, of the Gilbert Litigators firm; Eric L. Cramer, Ellen T. Noteware, David Langer, Jeremy Gradwohl, Richard Schwartz, Daniel J. Walker, Robert E. Litan and Hope Brinn, of Berger Montague; and Devin “Vel” Freedman, Edward Normand, Joseph Delich, Richard Cipolla, Peter Bach-y-Rita and Ivy Ngo, of Freedman Normand Friedland.