Law Firms to Share $1.6 million +

By Walter F. Roche Jr.


Six law firms will share at least $1.6 million from the settlement of cases brought against a Nashville, Tenn. clinic in the aftermath of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.
In a series of motions filed today in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass., the law firms are asking U.S. District Judge Rya W. Zobel to approve the fees but also to keep the amount of the payments secret.
Under the proposal the law firms will share 8 percent of the total awarded to victims. While that figure has never been disclosed, it is reported to be in excess of $20 million. The settlement resolves claims filed by 114 patients or their survivors who were injected with a fungus laden steroid in 2012 at the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center.
The firms sharing the fees are Hagens, Berman, Branstetter Stranch and Jennings, Ellis and Rapacki, Lief Cabraser Heiman and Bernstein, Kinnard Clayton and Beveridge and Leader Bulso and Nolan.
"The 8 percent assessment has been the level of reasonable expectation of counsel and the claimants from the earliest stages of the multi-district litigation," the motion states.
"Significant good work was performed by many lawyers in pursuing claims asserted in the Saint Thomas cases," the filing states.
In a report filed earlier this week in the same court case, it was reported that checks  have been processed for 90 of the 114 victims who filed claims against Saint Thomas. The payments represent about 90 percent of the total each victim is expected to finally receive.
The payments from the Saint Thomas settlement are separate from payments victims are slated to get from a nation settlement fund established under the bankruptcy of the New England Compounding Center, the Massachusetts firm that shipped the tainted methylprednisolone acetate to health providers across the country.
Some of the same law firms are sharing $6.2 million from a separate legal action stemming from the 2012 outbreak. Those fees were detailed earlier this week in a report also filed in Boston.
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