United States Seventh Circuit

In an attorney's claim that she is entitled to three times as much as the $2.7 million that she was awarded in a 1998 class action suit against a large credit-reporting agency for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act for selling information in its consumer credit files to advertisers without the consumers' authorization, both because the total attorneys' fees awarded to class counsel were too little and because her share of them was too small, the district court's judgment is modified and remanded as, the special master failed to justify the $13 million ceiling on fees as the final figure was based on unresolved comparison with securities class actions, the arbitrary reduction in attorneys' fees for the nonpecuniary relief, and the perfuncotry consideration, which also left unresolved, of the relative risk of loss in the present case.

Appellate Information

• Argued 09/17/2010
• Decided 01/14/2011
• Published 01/14/2011

Judges

• POSNER

Court

• United States Seventh Circuit

Counsel