The federal judge overseeing litigation targeting Yahoo! Inc. with data breach claims has rejected a proposed $85 million settlement citing a number of problems with the deal—including that the plaintiffs are asking for an “unreasonably high” attorneys fees of up to $35 million.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who has been overseeing In re Yahoo! Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation since 2016, took issue with the fact that 143 lawyers at 32 firms were included in the $22 million lodestar calculation submitted by the plaintiffs, even though she only authorized five firms to work on the case.

Click here to read the full ruling

Koh wrote in a 24-page order issued Monday evening that legal issues involved were “not particularly novel.” The proposed deal, the judge noted, was filed before the parties finished briefing class certification. She also noted that the case involved only a limited number of claims under California law, and class counsel took only 7 depositions, declining to depose Yahoo's proposed experts.

“Specifically, the court finds that class counsel prepared limited legal filings with numerous overlapping issues, and that class counsel completed limited discovery relative to the scope of the alleged claims,” Koh wrote. “Moreover, class counsel fails to explain why it took 32 law firms to do the work in this case.”