In Re: Syngenta AG MIR162 Corn Litigation <b><font color="red">COUNSEL: DO NOT ADD PARTIES.</font></b>, 2:14-md-02591

Background

MDL settlement with total attorney-fee award of one-third of the settlement fund ($503,333,333.33) was allocated among four pools: Kansas MDL (49%), Minnesota state court (23.5%), Illinois federal court (15.5%), and IRPA pool (12%).
The district court adopted a special master’s framework assigning applicants to three common-benefit pools (Kansas, Minnesota, Illinois) primarily by where common-benefit work was performed; each court would allocate fees within its pool.
The Minnesota state court (Judge Laurie J. Miller) was charged with allocating the Minnesota pool and issued an order (Schedule A) awarding fees to specific firms; several firms timely objected to that Minnesota allocation in this Court.
This Court limited its review to structural or procedural defects in the other courts’ allocations, deferring to the other courts’ factual judgments about the relative contributions of firms.
Four firms (Yira Law Office; Johnson Becker, PLLC; Shields Law Group, LLC; Toups/Coffman Plaintiffs’ Counsel) raised objections or motions for reconsideration asserting procedural or valuation errors in the Minnesota allocation.
The Court overruled all objections, concluded no structural/procedural infirmity existed, and adopted the Minnesota schedule (incorporated as Attachment A) for distribution of the Minnesota pool.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the Court should disturb Minnesota court’s allocation of its common-benefit pool	Firms argued allocations undervalued their common-benefit work (e.g., PFS work), sought different valuation methods or pool placements	Court (and Minnesota CLC) argued allocation decisions were within Minnesota court’s expertise and procedural choices were reasonable	Overruled objections; Court deferred to Minnesota court’s allocation and adopted Schedule A
Whether PFS work must be compensated on an hourly lodestar rather than flat fee	Yira argued PFS work deserved hourly lodestar or greater compensation and prior work (pre-lead appointment) should count	Minnesota court treated PFS compensation as flat-fee where appropriate and excluded some pre-appointment work; this Court will not reweigh valuation	Rejected; Court found these are non-structural valuation judgments and deferred to Minnesota court
Whether firms could be placed in multiple pools (and thus receive allocation from each)	Johnson Becker and others argued they performed significant work in multiple jurisdictions and should be placed in multiple pools or have work valued by the court in whose jurisdiction it occurred	Special master and district court assigned most firms to a single pool (with limited exceptions) so a single court would evaluate all that firm’s common-benefit work	Rejected; Court found requests untimely/abandoned and that plaintiffs had received clarification and process; single-pool assignment stands
Whether the four-pool allocation framework is legally deficient	SLG argued the four-pool structure produced inequitable results and should be reconsidered	Court defended the four-pool structure as reasoned and adopted to let courts familiar with the work allocate within pools; SLG’s attack was untimely	Denied motion for reconsideration; Court affirmed four-pool structure

Key Cases Cited

(No official-reporter decisions with Bluebook citations were cited in the opinion.)