A federal appeals court upheld a settlement agreement that divided some of the attorneys’ fees from a $1.51 billion lawsuit related to genetically modified corn on Monday. The court stated that those firms contesting the settlement did not have the right to intervene as their awards would not be influenced by the agreement.
The monumental litigation began after Syngenta AG released GMO seeds in China without gaining regulatory consent. This caused US corn producers, mostly from Kansas, Minnesota, and Illinois, to lose access to the Chinese market. Consequently, they sued Syngenta, and these individual cases were compiled into a multidistrict litigation overseen by the US District Court for the District of Kansas.
Resulting from the $1.51 billion settlement were attorneys’ fees totaling $503 million. This sum was split into four segments, three of which were relative to the common benefit tasks performed in each state. The fourth bundle was intended for attorneys who represented individual clients, and not for the advantage of the class. These fees were then distributed to individual firms within each pool.
This allocation scheme was contested by several companies, leading to a plethora of appeals. The Tenth Circuit, however, ruled in February that the complainants did not provide proof that the fee allocations were an abuse of discretion.
Among the first wave of appealants was Watts Guerra LLP among others not challenging any allocation orders. These firms came to an agreement to terminate litigation over the potential fees for Watts Guerra, entailing a $7 million payment from the state common benefit pools. The funding would result from a reduction in other firms’ awards, except for those appealing allocation orders. As per the ruling by Judge Jerome A. Holmes, firms with pending appeals or opposing the settlement were “not required to contribute to the fund”.
Furthermore, those opposing the Watts Guerra settlement did not experience any change to their shares of the $503 million award of attorneys’ fees and suffered no concrete prejudice as a result, Holmes argued. The court has postponed ruling on the appeals related to the fourth set of fees, this being the allotment intended for attorneys advocating for individual clients.
For more context and granular information, refer to the detailed court documentation available here.