Plaintiff lawyers in NCAA House settlement set to receive more than $750 million in legal fees
A federal judge on Friday, July 11, awarded lawyers for the plaintiffs in three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences more $520 million in legal fees and costs.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken also granted the lawyers the right to apply annually for an award of fees and costs "for work in monitoring and enforcing compliance" the settlement, which is set to last 10 years. Those amounts — which will be based on a small percentage of the money that schools spend on new benefits and compensation for athletes allowed under the agreement — could end up totaling $250 million more over the life of the settlement, according to the request for fees and costs that the plaintiffs' lawyers made to Wilken in December 2024.
The settlement calls for a combined total of nearly $2.8 billion in damages to be paid over the 10 years, which also is the time span over which the basic fees-and-costs award to the lawyers is set to occur. The fees-and-costs award will come from the damages pool.
In addition to the damages, beginning July 1, the settlement allowed schools to begin paying athletes directly for their use of the athletes' name, image and likeness (NIL). Also, for schools that choose to make NIL payments to athletes, the NCAA's prior system of sport-by-sport scholarship limits is being replaced by sport-by-roster limits. As a result, numerous schools have said they will increase the number of athletic scholarships they award.
The settlement includes a per-school cap on the value of new benefits that they can award. The NCAA has informed schools that the cap will be $20.5 million for the 2025-26 school year, but that figure is being audited by the plaintiffs' lawyers and regardless of the audit's outcome, the dollar value of the cap is scheduled to increase during each year of the settlement.
Citing from an economic expert for the plaintiffs, Wilken wrote in her order granting final approval of the settlement that the new benefits and compensation to athletes will total at least $19 billion over the 10 years covered by the agreement.
In addition to saying that the fees-and-costs award is "well below" local judicial benchmarks that allow fees-and-costs awards of 25% of a damages pool, Wilken wrote: "The reasonableness of the fees in question is confirmed by the fact that such fees are commensurate with the extraordinary results that Class Counsel achieved for settlement class members, the risks and costs of continued litigation, the skill and experience of Class Counsel, and the fact that Class Counsel committed substantial resources on a contingency basis for the benefit of settlement class members."
The lead attorneys for the plaintiffs are Steve Berman of Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Jeff Kessler of Winston & Strawn's New York office.
Wilken also approved specific financial awards for the named now-former-college-athlete plaintiffs in the lawsuits that they will receive in addition to any damages. Those amounts include $125,000 each for swimmer Grant House, women's basketball player Sedona Prince and football player Tymir Oliver, and $50,000 each for former football player Chuba Hubbard and track and field athlete Keira McCarrell.
The settlement is set to face seven appeals to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based on filings made by a deadline that passed the night of Monday, July 7.
None of the appeal notices were accompanied by a motion seeking to put at least a temporary stop to the going-forward aspects of the agreement. However, the settlement says that in the event of appeals of this nature, the NCAA and the conferences would begin making damages payments, but the money would be held in escrow — not paid to athletes or lawyers — until appeals are completed.
In her fees-and-costs ruling, Wilken specifically wrote that the amounts that the plaintiffs' lawyers requested were "unopposed." She added in footnote that seemed aimed at the appeals process: "Some objectors who opposed" final approval of the settlement "argued that the fees that Class Counsel request ... are indicative of a conflict" in their responsibility fairly represent all of the athletes covered by the settlement. "Those arguments have no bearing on the question of whether the fees ... requested ... are fair and reasonable."