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Excerpt: "One of the hottest bidding wars this year wasn't over a $55 million
Picasso at Christie's or a $21 million Manet at Sotheby's but for the lucrative role
as lead counsel in the class action lawsuit against the two auction houses for
alleged price-fixing.
In April, the federal judge overseeing the anti-trust action, Lewis Kaplan, sought
bids from lawyers in a move to tap a qualified firm that would represent class
members at the lowest cost. The winning bidder was the upstart Armonk, N.Y.
firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner.…Mr. Boie's firm now stands to earn $26.75
million - or about 5% of the proposed Sotheby's Christie's settlement - far less
than lawyers usually receive in class action cases where attorneys' fees
typically account for as much as 30% of the settlement.
... Hoping to infuse some competition into the system, some judges are
experimenting with attorney auctions. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San
Francisco did so almost a decade ago in a securities class action suit against
Oracle Corp. since then, judges in several class action suits, including one
against real-estate and travel giant Cendant Corp. and another against Lucent
Technologies, Inc. have also employed versions of the auction model"
