Judge signals support of attorney fees request in $425 million Google privacy suit

A federal judge in San Francisco indicated he'll likely approve attorney fees 'within the realm' of the $146 million requested by lawyers representing roughly 100 million users in a privacy class action against Google, though he declined to rule outright. The underlying case found Google kept collecting app data after users opted out, and a jury awarded $425 million, now grown past $440 million with interest; plaintiffs' counsel wants a third of that fund plus $12 million in costs.

Judge Richard Seeborg noted 300 objections from class members over the disproportion between the modest per-person payout and the attorneys' cut, but plaintiffs' attorney David Boies argued that's simply how class actions work when individual claims are too small to litigate alone. Boies also requested $50,000 payments for two testifying class representatives and $35,000 for a third, sums Seeborg called 'a magnitude higher than any award I have given.'

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