Plaintiff’s lawyers who filed suits against BP PLC over the Deepwater Horizon disaster are protesting a 6 percent “holdback” fee being assessed against their clients to pay the committee that obtained a $7.8 billion settlement in the multidistrict litigation against the oil company.
Typically, a plaintiffs’ steering committee spearheading an MDL charges lawyers pursuing individual cases a fee, to cover expenses run up for the common benefit of everyone in the case. That includes filing motions, arguing in court, taking depositions and hiring experts. The fee represents a percentage of the individual plaintiffs’ gross settlement, reducing any contingent fee for the client’s attorneys.
