Judges in three states have divvied up more than $440 million in attorney fees so far in the litigation over Syngenta's genetically modified corn, but their orders have prompted multiple appeals and an unusual rebuke from the bench.

U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum of the District of Kansas, who is overseeing the multidistrict litigation against Syngenta, granted $503 million in common benefit fees last year as part of a $1.5 billion class action settlement. He divided the fees into four pools, three of which focused on cases in specific venues: Kansas, Minnesota and Illinois. Lungstrum allocated nearly $247 million in fees to 59 firms handling the multidistrict litigation in Kansas but allowed judges in Minnesota and Illinois to decide which firms got how much in their own venues.

On Aug. 19, Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel of the Southern District of Illinois, doled out more than $78 million for law firms in the Illinois cases but criticized the report and recommendation of special master Daniel Stack, whom she appointed in the case, as having "structural and procedural flaws."

"Ultimately, the report and recommendation fails to carefully evaluate the benefit of the work behind the hours, which dilutes the contributions of some applicants while significantly inflating the value of others," she wrote.

In a footnote, she also described as "highly inappropriate" a declaration from retired U.S. District Judge David Herndon of the Southern District of Illinois, who previously oversaw the Syngenta litigation, supporting Stack's "totally unprecedented methodology."

Paul Flowers of Paul W. Flowers Co. Cleveland, representing Anderson Law Offices, said Stack's methods were similar in the mesh case.

"It's all very concerning because he did the exact same thing in the TVM case: giving up on all the time data and hourly rates and multipliers and using a percentage approach where numbers are assigned based on what the committee thinks everybody deserves," he said. "And there's no way to double check that or confirm it."