Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement Receives Final Approval

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has closed the Bartz v. Anthropic case, issuing a 23-page order that grants final approval of the class action settlement, resolves several outstanding administrative details, and rules on attorneys’ fees. The fee question was the only part of the order to receive extended treatment.

As we noted in reporting on the May fairness hearing, the court gave each objector only a couple of minutes from the bench. The written order is more thorough, working through the objections at some length. As in the lead-up to the hearing, though, the most substantial objections came from people outside the settlement looking in. The court declined to entertain objections from non-class members, but it took care to remind those individuals that, precisely because the settlement does not cover them, they remain free to bring their own claims. That is already happening (e.g., the Chicken Soup for the Soul and Carreyrou suits are separate, individual actions) and the court’s order in approving the settlement may prompt others to follow.

Attorneys’ fees

The fee award for the plaintiff’s attorneys received extended discussion at the hearing and it was one of the main issues addressed in this final order. Class counsel initially sought $300 million, then later trimmed it to $187.5 million. In today’s order, the court approved an approximately $101.5 million payment to the attorneys. Measured against the original request, $100 million reads as restrained, even though it remains a very large fee by any ordinary measure. By my rough math, it works out to about $2,953 per hour across the 34,381.6 hours of attorney time the court credited. (In contrast, the court reduced the service award for each named author plaintiff from the $50,000 requested to $15,000—at the hourly rate quoted above, apparently valuing the class representatives’ own contribution to the case at something like five hours of their lawyers’ effort.)

Payments to class members

When class members will actually be paid is probably the most pressing question for many authors and publishers covered by the settlement. Under the Settlement Agreement, payments begin one business day after the “Effective Date,” defined as the date on which the time to file or notice an appeal of the Final Judgment expires. The Ninth Circuit generally allows 30 days to appeal. Assuming neither side appeals this order, that means funds should begin going out in a little over a month.