A U.S. judge on Wednesday signaled reluctance to award the full $217 million in legal fees requested by lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner and other firms for a consumer lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit, which once sought billions of dollars, later settled without Google paying any money.
During a hearing in Oakland, California, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers questioned veteran litigator David Boies, who represented the consumers, and the attorneys for Google from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who opposed the fee request.
The 2020 lawsuit alleged that Google collected data from users even when they used Chrome’s “Incognito” mode for private browsing. In April, Google agreed to a settlement that required the company to destroy billions of data records. However, the consumers failed to certify the case as a class action, and Google did not agree to pay any monetary damages.
Judge Rogers remarked, “I don’t think you were entirely successful because you didn’t win on a damages claim, which was clearly part of what was driving it.” However, she acknowledged that the settlement’s benefits were “not insignificant.”
Google, while denying any wrongdoing in the settlement, criticized the plaintiffs’ fee bid as “just another attempt to generate news and line their own pockets in a case they settled for $0.”
The plaintiffs’ firms—Boies Schiller, Susman Godfrey, and Morgan & Morgan—did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They stated they invested $62.4 million into the case based on their hours and rates, and they requested the court award more than triple that amount to account for their success and other factors.
Google accused the lawyers of claiming unreasonable hours and billing for lengthy meetings and allegedly duplicative work, urging Judge Rogers to cut tens of millions of dollars from the request. The company revealed it spent less than $40 million defending the case.
Judge Rogers criticized the plaintiffs for charging $667 an hour for document review and noted that the consumers’ lawyers did not need three to four attorneys present at a deposition. “You may want them there—that’s fine,” Rogers said. “You can’t charge for them.”
Boies defended the fee petition, which included work by attorneys from Susman Godfrey and Morgan & Morgan. He emphasized the significant time they invested in understanding Google’s technology and highlighted their achievements. “This was something where we really had to fight it out,” Boies stated.
Quinn Emanuel’s Andrew Schapiro countered, arguing that the consumers’ settlement was far from historic. “They struck out again and again and again,” he said.
Boies Schiller and Morgan & Morgan continue to pursue thousands of lawsuits in California state court, accusing Google of violating users’ privacy rights. These cases seek monetary damages that were denied in the federal action.
The case is Brown et al v. Google LLC, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-80147. Representing the plaintiffs are David Boies and Mark Mao of Boies Schiller Flexner, Bill Carmody of Susman Godfrey, and John Yanchunis of Morgan & Morgan. Representing Google are Andrew Schapiro, Diane Doolittle, and Stephen Broome of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
