The $44 million payday coming for some United Airlines pilots next week from the settlement of a pension dispute will include a $16.4 million payout for their Illinois lawyers.
Myron M. Cherry & Associates of Chicago will get the lion’s share of the Feb. 3 payment, raking in $9.8 million as class counsel in the long-shot labor dispute. Korein Tillery, a St. Louis-based firm, will take home $6.6 million for chipping in over three years. They represented 2,200 senior United pilots who claimed in a December 2006 federal lawsuit filed in Chicago that they were shortchanged by their union in a distribution of pension benefits related to the airline’s bankruptcy.
