Judge in Yahoo Data Breach Case Criticizes ‘Unreasonably High’ Attorney Fees
A federal judge in San Jose, California, refused to approve a class action settlement in litigation over a series of Yahoo data breaches, citing a lack of transparency and the possibility of “unreasonably high” attorney fees, according to the ABA Journal.
The plaintiffs had proposed a $50 million settlement fund, but the proposed notice to class members did not disclose the costs of creditor monitoring services or costs for class notice and settlement administration, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said.
She also found problems with the plaintiffs’ lawyers’ fees:
“Specifically, the court finds that class counsel prepared limited legal filings with numerous overlapping issues, and that class counsel completed limited discovery relative to the scope of the alleged claims. Moreover, class counsel fails to explain why it took 32 law firms to do the work in this case.”
