The judge handling the litigation over allegations that mushroom farmers conspired to fix prices has agreed to award class counsel more than $18 million for their work in the case.

U.S. District Judge Berle Schiller of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Thursday agreed to award $18.23 million in attorney fees, plus $4.25 million in expenses to the 11 firms that served as class counsel in the litigation.

In August, the court granted preliminary approval of an agreement to settle seven claims for $33.7 million, after having previously approved settlements with three other defendants for nearly $12 million. The order should finalize the litigation.

"In prosecuting this action, class counsel have expended more than 42,000 hours of uncompensated time, and incurred substantial out of pocket expenses, with no guarantee of recovery," Schiller said in the order. "Class counsel's hours were reasonably expended in this highly complex case that was vigorously litigated for more than 13 years, and their time was expended at a significant risk of non-payment."

Schiller's class counsel award was the same amount that the parties had requested in the motion filed in November seeking attorney fees.

Though Schiller's 11-page order did not outline exactly how much should be allocated to each firm, the motion requesting attorney fees allocated the lion's share to New York-based Garwin Gerstein & Fisher. According to the filing, the firm worked more than 11,000 hours on the case, with Odom & Des Roches working the second largest number of hours at nearly 9,000. The firm that spent the third largest amount of time on the litigation, according to the filing, was Philadelphia-based Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, with nearly 6,500 hours.

Schiller's motion directed Garwin Gerstein to allocate attorney fees and costs among the other firms serving as class counsel.

Several entities that directly purchased mushrooms originally filed the antitrust class action in 2006 against the members of the former Eastern Mushroom Marketing Cooperative.

Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by engaging in "naked price-fixing and conspired among themselves and in conjunction with [non-EMMC member] distributors to set artificially inflated [mushroom] prices." The plaintiffs also accused the cooperative of "'meeting and agreeing to fix the price of Agaricus mushrooms' and 'by collectively interfering with, penalizing and retaliating against any non-EMMC growers that sought to sell at prices that were below the artificially-inflated prices set by EMMC.'"

Defendants raised numerous challenges during the litigation, including a request to dismiss the action, claiming the plaintiffs' allegations were not specific enough to move forward and there were no differences in the allegations against the cooperative and the individual member farms. In April, Schiller rejected those arguments, saying that in the early stages of the litigation, it didn't matter.

One of the defendants also sought to have Schiller recuse from the case in May, saying he had participated in ex parte communications with some of the parties engaged in settlement talks. Schiller also denied that request.

Neither Bruce Gerstein of Garwin Gerstein, Barry Refsin of Hangley Aronchick, nor Andrew Kelly of Odom & Des Roches returned a call seeking comment.