Six plaintiffs' firms are seeking $675 million, roughly 9.3% of Bayer's $7.25 billion Roundup settlement, in a fee petition that will test contingency-fee benchmarks.
A coalition of plaintiffs' firms has petitioned for $675 million in attorneys' fees from the $7.25 billion Roundup mass-tort settlement Bayer AG reached with claimants alleging the herbicide caused cancer [1]. The fee request represents approximately 9.3 percent of the total settlement fund [1].
The petition was filed by six firms: Seeger Weiss LLP, Motley Rice LLC, Ketchmark & McCreight PC, Holland Law Firm, Williams Hart Boundas LLP, and Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel [1]. The filing is pending before a federal court and arises from the global Roundup litigation, one of the largest mass-tort settlements in recent history, which consolidated claims by plaintiffs who alleged that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma [1].
The substantive significance of the petition extends beyond its dollar figure. Courts evaluating common-fund fee petitions in mass-tort and class-action contexts apply a percentage-of-the-fund method, cross-checked by a lodestar calculation, and a 9.3 percent multiplier on a fund this size will invite heightened judicial scrutiny [1]. The petition is likely to draw objections from any objecting class members or the court's appointed fee examiner, if one is designated. Defense counsel at Bayer, having already committed to the underlying settlement, has limited standing to contest fee allocations that draw from a separate fund allocation, but the court retains independent authority to reduce any award it finds unreasonable. The outcome will function as a reference point for plaintiffs' firms and defense counsel negotiating fee structures in future mega-settlements.
The court must now schedule a fee hearing, receive any objections, and, if warranted, appoint a neutral to audit the hours and costs underlying the lodestar cross-check [1]. A ruling could take several months given the complexity of the record and the volume of individual claimant files involved. However the court rules, the decision will be closely watched by practitioners on both sides of the mass-tort bar as a pricing signal for contingency representation in nine- and ten-figure settlements.
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