A federal judge reviewing a $74.5 million fee request in a case against State Street Corp. has ordered lawyers from three plaintiffs firms to appear in court later this month to answer more questions about their billing, including Labaton Sucharow’s $4.1 million payment to a Texas lawyer.
Labaton, one of the three firms, reached an agreement last year with a special master who, while reviewing the fee request, uncovered what he called an undisclosed $4.1 million “referral payment” to Damon Chargois, a lawyer in Houston. Under the deal, Labaton said it would return more than $4.8 million, which also included its share of another $4.1 million in overbilling identified by the special master, Gerald Rosen. The two other plaintiffs firms in the case, San Francisco’s Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Thornton Law Firm in Boston, have objected to the special master’s findings.
