A Manhattan federal judge has awarded Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd $19.5 million in attorney fees for securing an $84 million settlement in a long-running class action lawsuit that accused MetLife Inc. of misleading investors by under-reporting its life insurance death liabilities.

The fees award, entered Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, capped nearly nine years of litigation in the case, which claimed that MetLife had overstated its financial health, despite accusations that it had improperly retained money it owed to insurance beneficiaries.