Plaintiffs attorneys defending a $38 million fee request in the Anthem data breach settlement lashed out at an objector for having a conflict of interest because he works for his own lawyer, Ted Frank, a known class action critic.

The objector, Adam Schulman, is an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Class Action Fairness, where Frank is the director. In objecting to the fee request, Schulman successfully asked for a special master, whose report last month lopped off $9 million from the request due to potentially duplicative billing and inflated rates for 33 contract attorneys.