Minding Ag's Business

LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- An ongoing legal fight over attorney fees waged by some law firms representing farmers in the Syngenta corn settlement cases that started in 2014 may just now be wrapping up years after farmers received payments.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Aug. 7 rejected a handful of remaining appeals filed by attorneys who objected to how pool funds were disbursed for attorneys' fees in the $1.51 billion settlement.

"All litigation must come to an end," the court said in a ruling last month.

"In their quest to get additional bites at a well-gnawed apple, the objecting firms have failed to raise any arguments that fall within the scope of the IRPA pool allocation appeals, as defined by our May 2024 briefing order and other decisions. And they fail to explain why we are mistaken in our understanding of the limited scope of the IRPA pool allocation appeals."

In June 2021, the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas issued an order to allocate pool funds in the settlement to include covering a percentage of legal expenses for law firms.

Plaintiffs in the cases alleged Syngenta sold corn with Agrisure Viptera and Duracade traits prior to the traits receiving import approvals in several countries including China. China had claimed it found and rejected corn shipments containing the traits, and plaintiffs argued the action resulted in lower corn prices.

As part of the settlement, attorneys for plaintiff farmers received $503 million in fees to be split between four pools of attorneys. The district court ruled that attorneys who had contingent-fee contracts with clients could only recover fees from pools created by the court.

As of Aug. 19, 2021, about 99% of 191,249 Syngenta corn settlement claims had been paid -- meaning most farmer claims were paid in the settlement.

The pools separately included attorneys who worked on behalf of farmers from Kansas, Minnesota and Illinois.

Law firms representing farmers objected to the inability to receive additional payments from one of the pools.

In September 2020, those firms argued before the district court that reconsideration to be paid from the pools was warranted based on new evidence that they continued to help farmers seek settlement payments past the claims deadline.

"The objecting firms reasoned that they had spent thousands of hours assisting their clients through the settlement claims process and that the district court's prediction that the settlement claims process would be 'quite simple and streamlined' was simply wrong," the court said.

The court said in its ruling that Paul Byrd Law Firm, for example, asked the district court to award it the contingent fee payments that it would be due under the original client contracts. The firm submitted hundreds of pages of documents outlining the post-settlement work it had done.

The objecting firms argued the compensation awarded to them did not account for all the work they performed on behalf of clients.

The firms also argued the district court abused its discretion when it set a contingent-fee cap for the contingency-fees pool of $60 million.

"The special master did not and was never going to decide whether to adjust the 6.6% contingent attorneys' fees based on work performed," the court said in its ruling.

"Yet what the objecting firms do not see -- or do not wish to see -- is that challenges to the total amount allocated to the (pool) are outside the scope of these appeals."

A special master is a court-appointed expert who assists with many aspects of class-action lawsuits.

The law firms also argued to the appeals court that the district court violated their due process rights when it capped contingent-fee contracts before it knew the scope of the post-settlement work and did not award compensation in a "fair and evenhanded manner."

"This argument fails for the same reason as the others: once again, it does not challenge the allocation of the IRPA pool -- instead, like the objecting firms' second argument, it challenges the overall allocation to the IRPA pool and the modification of the objecting firms' contingent-fee contracts," the appeals court panel said.

"Thus, this argument, too, falls outside the scope of the IRPA pool allocation appeals, and we decline to reach it."

The appeals court ruled in May 2024 that pool allocation appeals did not give parties a second chance to challenge the overall fee-allocation plan. The appeals court said last month that the law firms did not challenge that structure directly.

"They have not made any effort to explain to us why our understanding of the limited scope of what remained for decision was wrong," the appeals court said.

Read more on DTN:

"Thousands of Corn Claims Remain Unpaid," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

"First Settlement Checks Go to June," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

"Final Syngenta Corn Payments Coming," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @DTNeeley

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