By David Thomas, Mike Scarcella and Karen Sloan

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com.)

A proposed payout for plaintiffs' lawyers who negotiated a pending $7.25 billion settlement over Bayer’s Roundup could be one of the largest legal fee awards ever if it is approved by a Missouri state judge.

Lawyers at six firms — the ‌Holland Law ⁠Firm; Ketchmark & McCreight; Seeger Weiss; Motley Rice; Williams Hart & Boundas; and Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel — on Friday requested $675 million in fees for their role in negotiating a deal that would settle current ​and future lawsuits alleging that Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.

Christopher Seeger of Seeger Weiss said in a statement that the proposed Roundup settlement is one of the largest class recoveries ever and the largest in Missouri's history, and that "the 9.3% fee request is a small fraction of the one-third benchmark courts routinely approve in major class action settlements.”

“This case is unique because class counsel will continue working on it for 17 additional years, and the fee request reflects nearly two decades of additional work, risk and expenses," Mike Ketchmark, of Ketchmark & McCreight, said in an email.

The other firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The six firms said in their request that the $675 million would also be shared among other law firms representing plaintiffs in the case.

Bayer unit Monsanto said in a statement that it looks forward to finalizing the settlement, which would establish a long-term claims program funded by capped annual payments over up to 21 years. The deal covers the bulk of pending lawsuits, but requires a judge's approval and a minimum number of plaintiffs to opt in. The company, which has denied that Roundup's key ingredient glyphosate ⁠causes cancer, did not comment on the fee request.

If approved at an upcoming July hearing, the $675 million award would be in rare territory, surpassing fee awards of $667 million and $657.1 million in antitrust litigation against insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield in 2022 and 2025, respectively, and a $540 million fee award that went to attorneys who negotiated a $6.01 billion settlement with 3M in 2024.

In 2024, a federal judge awarded $956 million in legal fees in two settlements worth more than $11 billion to public water systems that sued major manufacturers of chemicals containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

Judges consider a range of factors when determining whether an attorney fee award is reasonable, including the size of the settlement, the lawyers' time invested and the difficulty of the case. Beyond the legal requirements, judges can be reluctant to sign off on large awards, and fee ratios tend to decrease in particularly large settlements, said Michael Perino, a law professor at St. John's University in New York.

"When you get into these really large settlements, it’s usual for the judge to feel a little bit of sticker shock," said Perino, who declined to comment on the specifics of the Roundup litigation.

Perino pointed to the fee request by attorneys who successfully challenged Elon Musk's $56 billion pay package at Tesla. The lawyers sought more than 29 million Tesla shares, amounting to billions of dollars depending on Tesla's share price.

A Delaware judge rejected the request in December 2024, calling it a "bold ask" in a lawsuit about excessive compensation. She instead awarded the lawyers $345 million, which was the largest fee award ever in Delaware. Tesla has appealed the decision.

"Judges are human beings," Perino said. "At some point, the judge is going to consciously or unconsciously say, 'Wow, that seems like a lot of money.'"

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GOOGLE FIGHTS $40 MILLION FEE BID

Alphabet’s Google has urged a U.S. judge to sharply reduce a request by plaintiffs’ lawyers for nearly $40 million in fees from a $135 million class action settlement, arguing the demand would amount to an unearned windfall.

The settlement would resolve claims that Google programmed its Android operating system to collect the cellular data of smartphone users without their permission.

In a filing in federal court in San Jose, California, Google asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi to cut the requested fee award of 29.5% of the settlement fund, saying it exceeds benchmarks for so‑called megafund cases.

Google said a lower percentage should apply based on the size of the settlement, and argued that even a 25% award would be excessive. The company also said the underlying lawsuit settled before class certification and without the level of risk or litigation milestones seen in cases that justify higher fees.

Google also argued that the plaintiffs’ firms, including Bartlit Beck and Korein Tillery, had already been compensated for much of their work in a related state‑court case. The attorneys won $115 million in fees in that case in February.

A spokesperson for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did attorneys at Bartlit Beck and Korein Tillery.

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