The California Attorney General's Office and five law firms that sued Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health alleging antitrust violations are seeking 32 percent, or $184 million, of the $575 million settlement that would end the litigation, according to Bloomberg Law.
The fees cover the nearly 217,000 hours the law firms spent representing the self-funded plans in the class-action lawsuit, the state attorneys and the United Food & Commercial Workers & Employers Benefit Trust. The 32 percent fee falls within the prevailing range of 25 percent to 40 percent in similar cases, according to the report.
"Together, we conducted ourselves as a single virtual law firm, efficiently combining the many talents of the various legal professionals that were necessary to successfully represent UEBT and overcome what would soon become a scorched-earth defense by Sutter and the five highly skilled law firms and scores of lawyers that represented it in this litigation," wrote Richard Grossman, Pillsbury & Coleman partner and co-lead counsel in a fee petition, according to Bloomberg Law.
The law firms filed the petition ahead of final approval of the proposed all-cash settlement. The hearing is slated for July 21 in California Superior Court.