Quinn Emanuel defends its $185 mln fee in Obamacare litigation

April 1 (Reuters) - Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan on Thursday clapped back against a challenge to the $185 million in legal fees a U.S. court awarded the law firm in an Affordable Care Act class action that secured $3.7 billion for health insurers.

The 900-lawyer business litigation firm said in a filing in the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that "a mountain of precedent" justified the 5% fee award after more than four years of litigation.

Quinn was responding to critics — more than 30 insurers mainly under UnitedHealthcare Inc and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc — that challenged the fee in January as "untenable" and "astronomical."

Quinn Emanuel represented a class of insurers that claimed the U.S. government had failed to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars as part of the Obamacare "risk corridor" program that was set up to encourage private health insurers to provide coverage to uninsured Americans.

The firm said it filed the first such lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a specialty court in which plaintiffs can seek money damages against U.S. agencies.

"Class counsel's complaint laid the foundation for all of the follow-on cases, defining the only successful legal theory and strategy for recovery that those cases pursued," Quinn partner Stephen Swedlow told the Federal Circuit.

Swedlow, co-managing partner of Quinn's Chicago office, did not return a message seeking comment. A lawyer for UnitedHealthcare and Kaiser Foundation did not immediately return a similar message.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in a 2020 ruling that the U.S. must pay more than $12 billion to insurers under the Obamacare risk-corridor program. Quinn filed friend-of-the-court briefs before the justices.

Lawyers for the objecting class members contend Quinn's 10,000 hours of work did not justify $185 million. "Class counsel never had to take a single deposition," Moe Keshavarzi of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton told the appeals court.

The objecting insurers have said an award of $8.8 million would be a "generous and legally defensible fee." Quinn's Swedlow said such an amount "would be an extreme outlier."

No argument date has been set.

The case is Health Republic Insurance Company v. United States, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 22-1018.

For plaintiffs: Stephen Swedlow and J.D. Horton of Quinn Emanuel

For objecting class members: Moe Keshavarzi of Sheppard Mullin

Read more:

Health insurers balk at Quinn Emanuel's 'astronomical' $185 million fee award

Quinn Emanuel awarded $185 million in fees for Obamacare case

Supreme Court tells U.S. government to pay insurers $12 billion under Obamacare

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