Lawyers awarded $147M in Google data privacy case
What's the story
A US judge has awarded nearly $147 million in legal fees to the attorneys who represented plaintiffs in a data privacy trial against Google last year. The decision was made by US District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco on Friday. The ruling comes after a jury found Google liable for secretly collecting app activity data from millions of users who had turned off a tracking feature.
Fee approval
Fee request made by law firms
The legal fee request was made by law firms Boies Schiller Flexner, Susman Godfrey, and Morgan & Morgan.
They had sought billions in damages during the trial and claimed to have spent over 49,670 hours on the litigation.
Judge Seeborg acknowledged the extraordinary nature of the case and the exemplary performance of counsel while granting this fee request.
Fee justification
Lawyers are being handsomely rewarded for success: Judge Seeborg
Judge Seeborg admitted that the size of the fee award was discomforting.
He noted, "The lawyers are being handsomely rewarded for their success, even as each of the 98 million class members will walk away with less than $5."
However, he justified this by saying it was a consequence of using class action to remedy widespread torts.
Appeal plans
Google plans to appeal against the verdict
Google has denied any wrongdoing and plans to appeal against the verdict.
The company contends that the plaintiffs "presented no survey evidence, expert testimony, or other uniform evidence establishing that users were actually misled by Google's disclosures."
Despite this, Judge Seeborg denied Google's request for a ruling summarily granting the company a win in a separate order on Friday.