Shutterstock_122546788Apple settles

Apple has settled up to $841 million of antitrust claims by state attorneys-general and a nationwide class of consumers who bought e-books from Apple and its publisher co-conspirators.

The pact comes almost a year after U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in New York held Apple civilly liable for conspiracy to fix prices, a

Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner savaged a district court for approving a class action settlement that paid lead class counsel an $11 million fee while providing class members with benefits worth, in Judge Posner's reckoning, no more than $8.5 million. Eubank v. Pella Corp., No. 13-2091 (7th Cir. June 2, 2014).

The fact that

On Nov. 4, Chief Justice John Roberts attached a "statement" to the Court's long list of orders in which it mainly denied review with respect to dozens and dozens of cases.

The statement related to something the Court hasn't addressed before — a challenge to a class action settlement that featured "cy pres" relief. 

Cy

Dry MaxIn the proverb, the dog in the manger can't benefit from eating the feed he's found in the barn, but he snarls and bites at the other beasts who could digest it and will starve without it. If I can't get a meal, neither can any of you.

The story came to mind last week.

Have you heard people — okay, lawyers — talk about "the Southern District"? As if you MUST know what they mean? Surely not the Southern District of West Virginia — one of the coolest names in the entire U.S. court system.

No. Not that. This:

S.

D.

N.

Y.

Where Learned Hand sat before Calvin

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The Fifth Circuit for a long time has seemed to insist on paying class counsel on a pure lodestar basis — hours x hourly rates. It looked to have stuck itself to the old-style lodestar method under Johnson v. Ga. Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (5th Cir. 1974).

That contrasts with other circuits'

Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner likes to riff on things that tickle his fancy. He does it a lot in his legal writing, of which he does a great deal. Just this week he wrote about how to tell if you should take an offer to settle:

Determining the reasonableness of a settlement requires comparing