Some Apparent Humana Wrangling -- On Whether It Will Fully Pay Plaintiffs' Class Counsel, For The Settled Zetia® Antitrust Class Action In Virginia...

An earlier order in the Norfolk, Virginia USDC had set five per cent of all settled amounts aside, for the benefit of the lawyers who've been working for nearly a decade now, on this massive multi-district federal class action litigation.

But at the end of last week, apparently Humana, Kaiser and Centene -- through their local counsels -- made some noises that their respective received settlement payments might not include a specific amount set aside for the class plaintiffs' steering counsels. And so those lawyers have asked the able USDC Judge to appoint a bank as escrow agent, and have Merck and Glenmark pay the five percent -- as the checks are cut, or wires transferred. . . directly into the bank escrow account for these long-laboring lawyers.

This is all so that the big insurers won't be able to short them on the decade's worth of fees and expenses -- that got us to this multi-billion dollar settlement. [Here is just one of our earlier backgrounders, on the class action -- more generally.] And from the memo requesting the appointment of a protective escrow agent, of April 11, 2024 -- we read this:

. . .Specifically, CBF plaintiff Humana, whose counsel also represent CBF plaintiffs Kaiser and Centene, filed in its home court a “background and current posture” letter in which it claimed that the “continuing applicability of [this Court’s Common Benefit Order] is uncertain”, while ignoring that the Common Benefit Order expressly retained this Court’s jurisdiction, for enforcement purposes, “over each CBF Case regardless of whether the case is subsequently transferred or remanded to a different court for later proceedings or trial. . . .”

Given the risks posed by this CBF plaintiff’s claim, the Court should immediately enter the proposed Escrow Agent Order to clearly establish Defendants’ reporting, holdback, and deposit duties and thereby immediately minimize the risk of loss and possible defiance of the Court’s Common Benefit Order. . . .

I think the lawyers' five percent totals nearly $90 million, as the various buckets of claims look to have settled for an aggregate of over $2 billion -- running from about 2008 to 2023. And so, I would expect that the escrow order will be entered, and the insurers will not be able to pull an end run around class counsel -- if that was even ever their intention.

If it is not their intent, then they should not complain about the escrow -- and if it is, then the escrow is likely needed. Onward, smiling -- with a busy, warm, museums-infused Spring week ahead.

नमस्ते