With a swagger in his step and a gold tie around his neck, Guido Saveri exuded an air of largesse Wednesday morning.
Moments earlier, a federal judge had approved attorney fees for Saveri and other plaintiffs lawyers who reached a $325 million settlement in a price-fixing case against companies that make DRAM computer chips.
Lead plaintiffs attorneys say an estimated $81.5 million, or 25 percent of the total settlement, will be split as fees between some 40 firms that worked on the case, which was brought on behalf of companies that used the chips in their products.
"Tony, I'll buy you a cup of coffee," Saveri told co-counsel Anthony Shapiro of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, who argued the fee motion before Northern District of California Judge Phyllis Hamilton.
I won't argue that this fee wasn't justified by existing law or was outside the bounds of reason. I know Judge Hamilton, and she has a reputation as being a pretty by-the-book, conservative judge.
But over eighty million dollars??? At my current salary as a public servant, I would have to work for over seven hundred (700) years to earn an equivalent amount. Judge Hamilton would have to work for approximately 560 years. It strikes me that this is somehow insane.