Judge in Google privacy class action awards lawyers $147 million in legal fees
US District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco granted the fee request by law firms Boies Schiller Flexner, Susman Godfrey and Morgan & Morgan over objections from some class members. A jury in September found Google liable for secretly collecting app activity data from millions of users who had disabled a tracking feature.
A US judge in San Francisco awarded nearly $147 million in legal fees to plaintiffs' lawyers who secured a $425 million jury verdict against Alphabet's Google in a data privacy trial last year. The decision was made by US District Judge Richard Seeborg, who rejected Google's attempt to dismiss the jury's verdict. Law firms Boies Schiller Flexner, Susman Godfrey, and Morgan & Morgan received the fee request, which was defended against objections from some class members.
The firms had billed over 49,670 hours for the litigation. Judge Seeborg deemed the fee request extraordinary but warranted due to the case's magnitude and the lawyers' performance. Despite the substantial award, each of the 98 million class members would receive less than $5. Google denied any wrongdoing and plans to appeal the verdict, arguing that the plaintiffs lacked uniform evidence to prove users were misled by Google's disclosures.
The judge denied Google's request for a summary ruling and also dismissed the plaintiffs' request for a new trial on part of their lawsuit.
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