The lawyers who secured a $215 million settlement in a class action suit accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc. of systemically underpaying thousands of female bankers asked the judge to award them a third of that amount in legal fees.
(Bloomberg) — The lawyers who secured a $215 million settlement in a class action suit accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc. of systemically underpaying thousands of female bankers asked the judge to award them a third of that amount in legal fees.
Law firms Outten & Golden and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein on Wednesday night filed a request in Manhattan federal court for $71.7 million in fees, plus $6.7 million in expenses, which would be taken from the settlement. Goldman had previously agreed to the amount when it agreed to settle the case in May.
Fees of 30% or more aren’t uncommon in class actions, where plaintiff’s lawyers take no money upfront and run the risk of getting nothing if they ultimately lose the case. And many cases drag on for a very long time, including the one against Goldman.
The lawsuit was filed by Cristina Chen-Oster, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who joined Goldman in 1997 and sold convertible bonds. She filed a discrimination complaint in July 2005 with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, then sued in 2010. The case eventually grew into a class action on behalf of 2,800 female associates and vice presidents at Goldman.
Read More: Goldman Moves to Settle Gender-Pay Suit for About $200 Million
It was one of Wall Street’s longest-running and most public fights over gender bias. Goldman aggressively challenged the size of the class, the type of evidence that could be raised in the case and argued to send many of the potential class members into private arbitration.
In their Wednesday filing, lawyers for Chen-Oster said the fee award was justified due to the “thirteen-plus years of intensive litigation” that brought about the settlement, including 48 depositions, review of hundreds of thousands of documents and numerous legal disputes with Goldman.
The lengthy litigation in the Goldman case stands in contrast to another big fee award request in a case against a big bank. Lawyers who sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. on behalf of victims of former client Jeffrey Epstein, similarly requested 30% of the $290 million settlement in that case, but that suit was first filed less than a year ago.
Read More: JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank Epstein Deals Offer Lawyers $110 Million
The Chen-Oster settlement, including the legal fees, must be approved by US District Judge Analisa Torres before they can take effect. The fees in the JPMorgan settlement and a similar case against Deutsche Bank AG are also still subject to court approval.
The case is Chen-Oster et al v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., 10-cv-06950, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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