Jump to full article: floridabiz.com (Daily Business Review), 2008-04-16
Author: Billy Shields
Intro: Miami-Dade Circuit Judge David C. Miller awarded $218 million in legal fees Tuesday to Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt for years of work they put into now-defunct class action litigation against the nation's biggest cigarette markers.
"I find it very reasonable," Miller said from the bench, referring to fee calculations estimating they worked for 77 hours a week on average at an hourly rate of $274. "These are reasonable and conservative hours."
"In fact, in some firms that would not have been acceptable billing," he joked before a courtroom packed with at least 200 people.
Tobacco attorney Robert Heim, a partner with Dechert in Philadelphia, told Miller "it would be wrong under common fund law" to award fees to the Rosenblatts, saying a guardian ad litem should be appointed to administer a fund "to protect the interests of the class."
The fees would come out of a common "guaranteed fund" of about $800 million that Big Tobacco put up as collateral in 2001 to appeal the record $145 billion punitive verdict the Rosenblatt's won against cigarette makers. The verdict was later thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court along with a class certification order uniting sick smokers in a single lawsuit.
Miller still must determine how to distribute the rest of the $800 million fund. . . .
A line to speak in support of the Rosenblatts' fee request ran out of the room. Many people at the hearing were visibly ill or relatives of deceased smokers.
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