A leadership committee tasked with allocating an estimated $550 million in common benefit fees to 94 law firms involved in the transvaginal mesh lawsuits is defending against claims of "self dealing and bill padding."

More than 100,000 lawsuits were filed over the devices, most of them coordinated in multidistrict litigation in federal court in West Virginia. Four law firms have since objected to their share of the fees: Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, Kline & Specter, Bernstein Liebhard and Anderson Law Offices. They claim they were not paid enough for their work and accuse firms on the fee and cost committee of using their positions to enrich themselves. Of the eight firms on that committee, five earned the highest amount of fees, collectively taking home nearly 40 percent of the common benefit fund.

On Monday, Henry Garrard, a shareholder at Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley in Athens, Georgia, who is chairman of the fee and cost committee, filed a response blasting the false attacks and accused some of the objecting law firms of excessive billing (see story).