Syngenta Special Master Rejects $150M in Fees for Texas Attorney Mikal Watts

By: Amanda Bronstad

A special master reviewing fee requests from hundreds of law firms in the $1.51 billion settlement with Syngenta has recommended that lead counsel get half the estimated $500 million in legal fees but rejected the idea that attorney Mikal Watts, who represents 60,000 farmers in the deal, should get $150 million.

U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum on Nov. 15 approved the class action settlement, which resolved lawsuits alleging Syngenta sold genetically modified corn seed that China refused to import, causing about 600,000 farmers and other producers to lose billions of dollars. Lungstrum oversaw the multidistrict litigation coordinated in Kansas federal court, but many other cases were pending in federal and state courts in Minnesota and Illinois. Some were class actions, while others were individual lawsuits.

That led to a big battle over attorney fees. On Nov. 21, special master Ellen Reisman issued a report and recommendation on how to allocate fees to about 400 law firms.

“Here, the settlement agreement recognizes that the successful result in this case was obtained through the work of multiple counsel in multiple jurisdictions who collectively applied litigation pressure in multiple forums that ultimately persuaded Syngenta to resolve the various litigations through a nationwide class action settlement,” wrote Reisman, of Reisman Karron Greene in Washington, D.C. “How to allocate the attorneys’ fee award among plaintiffs’ counsel is less straightforward.”

Objections to the report are due Dec. 5, and a hearing is set for Dec. 17.

Reisman’s report largely reflects a suggestion from lead counsel in the multidistrict litigation in Kansas on how to divvy up the fees, much of which was based on a fee sharing agreement in the settlement. Although other lawyers played key roles in reaching the settlement, 50 percent of the fees should go to 95 law firms in the multidistrict litigation in Kansas, Riesman wrote. That included lead counsel Patrick Stueve of Kansas City, Missouri-based Stueve Siegel Hanson; Don Downing of Gray, Ritter & Graham in St. Louis; Scott Powell of Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton in Birmingham, Alabama; and William Chaney of Dallas-based Gray Reed & McGraw.

Reisman particularly praised the work of a lead settlement counsel Chris Seeger of New York’s Seeger Weiss.

“Mr. Seeger was the clear leader of the settlement effort on the plaintiffs’ side, and without his efforts a settlement would not have been achieved,” she wrote.

She rejected arguments from Watts, of Watts Guerra in San Antonio, that he and a group of 224 associated law firms, representing primarily individual farmers with cases in Minnesota state court, should get one third of the pie.

Stueve said lead counsel could not comment about the report, and Watts did not respond to a request for comment.

The dispute mirrors similar fee fights that have erupted in mass torts between plaintiffs attorneys appointed to represent the class and those who have brought individual suits on behalf of their clients. Reisman, in her report, acknowledged those other cases, predominantly the $1 billion concussion settlement with the National Football League. In that case, she wrote, the judge allowed some portion of attorney fees to go to lawyers with individual clients, and not just lead class counsel, but capped their contingency rates.

“There is significant legal support for the proposition that the courts have the required personal and subject-matter jurisdiction and the legal and equitable authority to modify contingent fee arrangements,” she wrote.

But she found that the Syngenta litigation had some key differences—most notably, the pressure that a large chunk of individual cases had on reaching a settlement. In her report, she wrote that “no single event or group of plaintiffs’ counsel was solely responsible for pushing this litigation to resolution.”

The Syngenta multidistrict litigation, created in 2014, involved subclasses of farmers in eight states planned for trials. Last year, a mistrial aborted the first bellwether trial, in Minnesota, but a federal jury awarded $217.7 million to a class of Kansas farmers in a second trial. Another trial, on behalf of a class of Minnesota farmers, was ongoing when both sides struck a deal.

Watts Guerra partner Francisco Guerra was co-lead plaintiffs counsel in Minnesota state court, but no one from the firm had a lead role in the multidistrict litigation. The firm did work on the Minnesota trial, however, and Watts was one of four lawyers appointed to the plaintiffs’ negotiating committee.

Watts did not sign the fee sharing agreement in the settlement but instead based his request on a 2015 joint prosecution agreement with lead counsel in the multidistrict litigation. He calculated his request using a reduced contingency rate of less than 24.2 percent and $12.8 million in reimbursements for common benefit expenses he paid in the Minnesota state court litigation.

His request for fees got some pushback. Some lawyers representing individual farmers, including one who filed a lawsuit against Watts earlier this year, accused the Texas lawyer of cutting them out of negotiations and luring farmers to retain him in order to get fees. Watts called the suit “frivolous.”

In court documents, lead counsel in the multidistrict litigation argued that the 2015 joint prosecution agreement had nothing to do with the class actions and would set Watts up to get as much as $200 million. They sought 50 percent of the $500 million, with Seeger Weiss getting at least 10 percent, but suggested that 12.5 percent go to the lead lawyers in Minnesota state court and 17.5 percent to attorneys in Illinois. The remaining $100 million would be reserved for other lawyers.

Reisman agreed on the 50 percent and, as to the arguments from Watts, found that the 2015 agreement was “irrelevant” to the fee award in a nationwide class action. But she doubled the allocation to the Minnesota group, which includes Watts, assigning 24 percent, or about $120.8 million.

“Unquestionably, the Minnesota state court litigation both advanced the cause of pressuring Syngenta on multiple fronts and, through coordination with Kansas counsel, assisted the nationwide class effort,” Reisman wrote. Lawyers in the Illinois cases, whose award totaled $80.5 million, or about 16 percent, “presented an important third pressure point on Syngenta,” she wrote.

She also allocated 10 percent to lawyers with individual clients, capping their contingency rates at 10 percent. She said most of those firms recruited clients and filled out fact sheets, while lawyers in leadership in Kansas, Minnesota and Illinois did the “vast majority” of the work.

“A 10 percent contingent fee is obviously a significant reduction from the typical 30-40 percent contingent fee,” she wrote. “However, it is appropriate given the history of this litigation.”