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A special master looking into potential overbilling in a $75 million attorney fee request has delayed the findings of a report he said could have “serious and far-reaching adverse ramifications” for plaintiffs firms in the case and “for the practice of the plaintiffs' class action bar.”

Retired U.S. District Chief Judge Gerald Rosen of the Eastern District of Michigan, now of the JAMS mediation service, was appointed special master a year ago in a securities class action settlement with State Street Corp. after a federal judge raised concerns about the billing activities of three plaintiffs firms. In a Feb. 28 letter to the judge, Rosen asked that he extend a March 15 deadline for his report to be completed. That would give plaintiffs lawyers more time, he wrote, to respond to an 85-page expert report that New York University School of Law professor Stephen Gillers prepared for him as part of the investigation.

“Counsel pointed out that the stakes for their clients are extraordinarily high in this matter,” Rosen wrote. They told him “that if I were to adopt in my report the opinions of professor Gillers, there could potentially be serious and far-reaching adverse ramifications [for] at least some of the firms, and even beyond this investigation for the practice of the plaintiffs' class action bar and even for courts in class actions.”