The Google Play antitrust settlement has been final since April 30. The consumer fund, $630 million, is set. The states received another $70 million for their sovereign claims. What has not been settled is the bill. On October 15, U.S. District Judge James Donato rejected an $85 million request from the private lawyers who helped negotiate the consumer fund, along with about $8.58 million in expenses and $5,000 incentive awards for six named plaintiffs. He gave counsel until November 13 to file an amended application.
The order is about fees, but it reads as a lesson in how public-private antitrust litigation works. The private lawyers claimed 13.5 percent of the fund for roughly 98,200 hours of work. The judge did not say the work was worthless. He said the record did not let him evaluate it, and that the lawyers had overstated their role in a settlement that many other lawyers helped produce.
The settlement was approved; the fee was not
A class settlement has two tracks. One is the agreement itself, which the court approves after reviewing whether it is fair to the class. The other is the fee application, which the court decides separately. The Google Play settlement cleared the first track in April. The fee request is still on the second.
That distinction matters for consumers. The order does not undo the settlement or take money out of the consumer fund. It sends the lawyers back to document their work. The fund remains available for distribution, and the states' $70 million is untouched. The fee fight is about how the fund is divided, not whether it exists.
The separation also explains why the fee fight can outlast the settlement. Class members receive notice and a chance to object at the approval stage, but the fee motion often comes later, when the fund is already established and the lawyers are the only parties with a direct interest in the outcome. That is when a court's attention to the record matters most, because no one else is checking the bill.
Thirteen and a half percent, and a record that did not support it
The private lawyers asked for $85 million, about 13.5 percent of the $630 million consumer fund. They supported the request with a lodestar calculation of roughly $63.4 million for 98,200 hours, then sought a multiplier to reach the percentage. The percentage is within the range courts sometimes award in large antitrust settlements. The problem was the evidence behind it, as Legal Newsline's account of the order sets out.
Donato wrote that the billing records were utterly lacking in information demonstrating what work was done and for what purpose. He said the fees could not be fairly evaluated or awarded on what he called a paltry record. That is a documentation finding, not a finding that no work occurred. The lawyers may have done the work. They did not show it in a way the court could check.
That failure is common in big settlements. Firms aggregate time into categories, rely on summaries, or reconstruct records after the fact. A court reviewing a fee request is supposed to test whether the hours were reasonable and whether the work benefited the class. Aggregated entries make that test impossible. The judge's response was to deny the request without prejudice, which leaves the lawyers a chance to fix the record.
How a fee like this is supposed to work
Class action fees usually come from one of two methods. Under the percentage method, the court awards a share of the common fund. Under the lodestar method, the court multiplies reasonable hours by reasonable rates and may apply a multiplier to reflect risk and results. Many courts use the percentage method as a cross-check on the lodestar, or the other way around.
The $85 million request tried to have it both ways. The lawyers presented a lodestar of about $63.4 million and asked for a percentage of the fund that came to $85 million. The difference is roughly a 1.34 multiplier, which is not unusual. But a multiplier has to be justified by the risk the lawyers took, the quality of the result, and the benefit to the class. Those are facts a court needs a record to find.
The order suggests the record did not supply them. A fee award is not a prize for winning. It is payment for a service that produced a benefit for a defined group. If the court cannot see what service was performed, it cannot decide whether the price is fair. That is the principle the order applies, and it is not new. It is the same principle that applies to a $50,000 fee in a small case.
Who earned the benefit?
The more interesting part of the order is about credit. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands had lawyers involved in the litigation. The heavy lifting on liability and remedy, Donato wrote, was done by Epic Games' counsel in its separate case. The private lawyers argued that their work was part of a landmark public-private partnership and that they helped enable the states' settlement and Epic's victory.
Donato questioned whether work that directly benefited Epic should be paid for out of the states' settlement fund. That is the core of fee law. A fee award is not a reward for effort. It is compensation for a benefit conferred on the people who are paying. If the consumer lawyers' work duplicated the states' work, the fund did not need them. If their work was complementary, the record should show what they added.
The states did not object to the fee request, and they credited the private lawyers for helping the case. They did not endorse a specific amount. That left the judge to decide how much credit was due, and he found the record insufficient to answer the question.
The judge's skepticism is about credit, not arithmetic
It would be easy to read the order as a judge rejecting a big number because it is big. The arithmetic is not the problem. A 13.5 percent fee is not shocking in a case of this size. The problem is the numerator and the story behind it. The lawyers asked to be paid as if they had produced the settlement. The judge found that many others had produced it too.
The order also rejected the expenses and the incentive awards. The expense request apparently lacked supporting detail. The incentive awards were questionable because the case had lost class status at one point, which weakened the case for paying named plaintiffs for their service. Those are smaller items, but they reinforce the theme: the court wanted documentation, not assertions.
The class-status history is worth a note. The case went through a period when the class was decertified, and the settlement restored a path to recovery for consumers. That history cuts both ways. It shows the settlement delivered something real. It also shows the litigation was not a straight line from filing to victory, which makes the fee story more complicated than a simple percentage.
The denial is without prejudice, which means the lawyers can try again. The November 13 deadline gives them time to produce time records, describe the work, and explain how it benefited the consumer fund rather than the states or Epic. If they do, the judge may award a fee. If they do not, the request may fail again.
A template for the next public-private deal
The Google Play case is one of several in which state attorneys general and private counsel have worked together. Those arrangements can be efficient: the states bring sovereign authority, the private firms bring resources and expertise, and the combination can produce a settlement that neither could reach alone. They also create a fee problem. Who pays the private lawyers when the state is the client and the fund belongs to consumers?
The answer will shape how future deals are papered. States can decide in advance how private counsel will be compensated, whether through a separate agreement, a statutory fee, or a court award. Firms can keep contemporaneous records that tie each task to a benefit. Courts can require more detail at the approval stage. The alternative is what happened here: a settlement that works, followed by a fee fight that consumes another year.
The lesson for lawyers is simple. Document the work as if it will be reviewed, because it will be. The lesson for states is to decide who is paying private counsel before the settlement is signed, not after. The amended application is due November 13, and that deadline is the next test of whether the lessons were learned. The settlement stands. The consumer fund is intact. The fee award will come later, and it will be smaller or better documented. The case is a reminder that the last fight in a settlement is often about the bill.
The deeper issue is not unique to Google. Public-private enforcement is growing because states have limited resources and private firms have incentives to invest. That model can work, but it needs a fee mechanism that a court can audit. The Google Play order is a warning that the mechanism is not automatic. It has to be built into the deal.
Consumers who are waiting for a payment from the $630 million fund are not affected by the order. Their recovery depends on the settlement, which is final. The lawyers' bill is a separate ledger, and the judge has said he will not sign it until he can read it.
Primary sources
- Legal Newsline reporting on Judge Donato's October 15 order for the fee request, the settlement figures, the judge's quotations, the denied expenses and incentive awards, and the November 13 deadline.
- Reuters coverage via PYMNTS for the 13.5 percent request, the 98,200 hours, the lodestar figure, and the judge's criticism of the billing records.
- ABA Journal coverage for the earlier characterization of the fee request and the settlement's procedural history.
- Courthouse News coverage of the final settlement approval for the $700 million total and the April 30 approval date.