U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

The federal judge overseeing litigation targeting Anthem Inc. with data breach claims on Thursday continued her grilling of plaintiffs lawyers who represent the health insurer's customers about the number of firms who worked on the case.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh asked lead plaintiffs counsel, Eve Cervantez of Altshuler Berzon and Andrew Friedman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a string of detailed questions about which lawyers submitted bills on work settling the litigation, who defended depositions of name plaintiffs and who handled basic discovery tasks. Koh previously grilled the lead plaintiffs for having 49 other firms beyond those on the four-firm plaintiff steering committee she appointed.

After Cervantez said that 27 firms had worked on the “crisis” of getting through millions of pages of discovery, Koh stopped the plaintiffs lawyer.

“Is that how you run most of your cases? You have 27 firms doing document review?” the judge said.

Cervantez said it didn't matter who did the work or the firm where they practiced, but “were the hours expended reasonable.”

“How is that consistent with the conversation that I had with you and Mr. Friedman at the selection of counsel hearing?” asked Koh, who initially trimmed the lead plaintiffs proposed six-member steering committee to two firms.

Plaintiffs struck a $115 million settlement deal with Anthem last June, which included a proposed $38 million in attorney fees, or 33 percent of the total settlement. The deal provided two years of credit monitoring and identity protection services to Anthem customers whose personal data was compromised in the 2015 breach, and creates a $15 million fund to reimburse customers for things such as falsified tax returns.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Class Action Fairness filed an objection last year on behalf of Adam Schulman, an attorney at the Washington, D.C., organization, partially because of the fee request. Schulman claimed fees should be closer to $13.8 million and questioned why 49 other firms not appointed by the court stood to earn a total of $13.6 million in fees as part of the settlement.

Koh told plaintiffs counsel that she was “deeply disappointed” about the number of firms brought on to handle the case at a hearing in February. At Schulman's request, she appointed a special master, retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg, to comb over the fee request.

Kleinberg, who is now a mediator and arbitrator at JAMS, pointed to duplicate efforts and excessive billing rates for contract lawyers in suggesting in April that the fee award be trimmed to $28.59 million.

Koh didn't tip her hand on where she will ultimately come out on the fee request Thursday, but she did indicate that she'll rule on final approval of the deal by late July. She asked the plaintiffs to hand over detailed records about document review, depositions and post-settlement work.

“I would like to be able to see who did what work when at what hourly rate and for how many hours,” she said.  “I think I've already indicated that I'm disappointed, but it is what it is.”

Read more:

Anthem Lawyers Defending Their Fees Say Objector Has Conflict of Interest

Special Master Finds Legal Fee Bid Excessive in Anthem Data Breach Case

Judge Hires Special Master to Vet Attorney Bills in Anthem Settlement

Plaintiffs Lawyers in Anthem Data Breach Settlement Defend $38M in Fees