Quinn Emanuel Queried by Judge on $185 Million ‘Windfall’ Fee

A judge asked questions about a $185 million Quinn Emanuel fee insurers have called a “windfall” and was told by the firm that the results speak for themselves.

US Court of Federal Claims Judge Kathryn Davis peppered Quinn’s attorney with questions about the scrutiny she should apply to hours the firm claims it devoted to the case. “Do I have to take these hours at face value?” she asked.

Firm partner Adam Wolfson told the judge a high multiplier applied to the fee calculation is reasonable. “Our results speak for themselves,” he said at the Thursday hearing. “There’s been no result quite like this.”

The long-running fee dispute comes in a case that won health insurers roughly $3.7 billion in payments that the Supreme Court separately found were promised by the Affordable Care Act. The insurers are asking Davis to slash the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan award at least 88% to between $12 million and $23 million.

An attorney for the insurers, Moe Keshavarzi, told the judge that the firm’s billing descriptions were vague and said the court should demand more clarity. In a March filing the insurers called the 10,000 hours Quinn claimed to have worked on the case “staggeringly high” and wondered “how class counsel could have possibly spent” such time.

The award was remanded in January last year by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, with a ruling directing Davis to consider the so-called lodestar method, which dates back to the 1970s, as a multiplier in the case. The $185 million fee represents a multiplier of 18 times the Quinn’s average hourly rates.

Quinn Emanuel in May asked the US Court of Federal Claims to award the same $185 million figure. The firm has consistently defended the fee on the basis it created the idea behind the lawsuit, spent the 10,000 hours working on the case and achieved a rare 100% return on its clients’ claims.

The fee award represented 5% of the recovery, an amount the law firm told clients it would seek when they hired Quinn Emanuel for the case.

The case is Health Republic Insurance Co. v. The United States, Fed. Cl., 16 259, 3/5/24.