I was reading the ruling about attorneys fees in the FCRA class action over the reporting of discharged accounts on non filers' reports. It's actually 3 cases, essentially the same members against each CRA.
Some interesting facts:
Over 4 million notices were mailed out, with almost 1/4 returned undeliverable. The court estimated that the class has between 1.9 and 2.3 million members. For the purpose of calculating attorneys fees, the court concluded that the class had no less than 1.5 million members.
The plaintiff's counsel and experts estimated $200, up to $1,000 to have the credit file rescored. The court concluded that the benefit to the members was at least $100 each, resulting in a value of 150 million for each case.
As of January 2004, 14,671 attorney hours and 834 paralegal hours had been submitted by the class counsel and the objectors. One of the objectors was Ms. Wheelahan, and attorney class member who also submitted 182 attorney hours on her own behalf and may not get anything.
In 1/2003, the parties had stipulated that the attorneys fees would not exceed $5 million per case and that the defendants would not contest those fees.
Guess who now contested the fees? Equifax and Trans Union.
The court did award the requested $5 million per case, and if you ever want to know more about various methods of calculating attorneys fees, this is a great document to read.
WELL worth it too, this is definitely a landmark case. We need a LOT more of those class actions, starting with the reporting of credit limits by Capital One.
I just don't know that any firm wants to start by mailing 30+ million class notices to members. You're talking over $10,000,000 in POSTAGE!
Posted by Christine at May 15, 2004 09:31 PM | TrackBack