California Oks Percentage Fees In Class Actions

The California Supreme Court has endorsed giving class-action lawyers a percentage of what they win in a case, rather than asking them to justify their fee based on hours. That ends lingering confusion in California over whether the “lodestar crosscheck” method of calculating hours should be used to assess whether a fee is reasonable. Proponents of the percentage fee say it incentivizes class-action lawyers to do the most work with fewer hours, hopefully leading to fewer useless motions. One major question remains, however: how will judges decide what percentage of a settlement is reasonable for a lawyer’s fee? The California Supreme Court did not address the issue, simply stating that 25 percent serves as a “benchmark.”