The lead plaintiff had claimed losses of $25 million, but settled for zero plus some corporate-governance changes that, as a Rutgers professor notes, probably would have happened anyway. But a settlement approved by a New Jersey federal judge in a shareholder suit against Schering-Plough awarded $9.5 million in attorneys’ fees, even applying a multiplier to lodestar hourly rates. [New Jersey Law Journal/law.com; In re Schering-Plough Corp. Securities Litigation, Case No. 2:01cv829 (D.N.J.)] Paying for those fees: shareholders, who also paid for what were likely multi-million dollar defense costs of litigation. Judge Katharine Sweeney Hayden, when certifying a single class in 2003, rejected arguments that there was an inherent conflict between class members that had already sold their stock and class members who continued to hold stock; she was appointed by Clinton in 1997.

Filed under: attorneys' fees, class action settlements, class actions, feeing frenzy, lawyers making clients worse off, New Jersey, securities litigation