Two attorneys representing plaintiffs have requested federal cassation in San Francisco, U.S.A., to be awarded more than $181 million in legal fees as part of a $725 million data privacy settlement with Mita Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, to resolve the user information sharing case with third parties.
The senior lawyers from my firm (Keller Rurbach) and (Blackmar Fonte & Old) LLP, said in their application, that the fees would represent 25 percent of the settlement funds, which is “in-scope for adjudicated cases of almost the same size,” according to the SKY News Arabia report.
Attorneys Derek Lauser of Keller Rurback and Leslie Weaver of Blackmar Fonte & Old stated in the document that the $725 million settlement is the largest data privacy compensation in history and the largest private settlement approved by Facebook.
The lawyers added that it took over 149,000 hours for the case to work over about 5 years.
In an email, they said: “Our fee petition reflects the effort required in this case by our teams and the named plaintiffs.”
Meta and an outside lawyer for the firm from the firm (Gibson, Dane & Crutcher) did not respond to requests for comment on the fee request, Thursday.
The lawsuit was brought after Facebook’s 2018 disclosure of access to data by British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was made public in 2018.
The company did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement that the judge granted preliminary consent in March.
A final approval hearing is scheduled for September 7th.
