New York Law Journal "A Case Study: Mandated Court Approval of Settlement and Related Attorney

There are circumstances in which the parties must obtain court approval to dismiss an action, and by extension, the parties’ settlement agreement. Courts consider a variety of factors when the parties request approval of a settlement agreement, attorney fees provided in a settlement agreement, and whether a court will even allow the parties to settle their dispute at the current stage of litigation. A case decided in the Eastern District of New York last month provides an excellent demonstration on how these factors may play out before a court, both for the circumstances explicitly relied on by the court, and as speculated in this article’s practice tips, the optics not explicitly referenced by the court. Although the court ultimately approved the parties’ settlement agreement, it reapportioned the amounts due under the agreement between the plaintiff and his attorneys. Read more.

This article first appeared in the New York Law Journal on July 26, 2019. David Shternfeld, an associate at the firm, assisted with the preparation of this article.