123958P.pdf   08/22/2014  The Phipps Group  v.  Don Downing & Adam Levitt, etc
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  12-3958
                          and No:  12-4045
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Colloton, Author, with Loken and Benton, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Common Benefit Trust Fund in MDL cases. The settlement 
   agreement in the Genetically Modified Rice Litigation, by which the Phipps 
   Group agreed to be bound, resolved that a percentage of payments due to 
   clients of Phipps would be allocated to the Common Benefit Trust Fund in 
   accordance with the district court's 2010 order in the case, and Phipps 
   waived its challenge to the creation of the Fund and to the order that 
   Phipps and its clients must contribute to the Fund; the procedures the 
   court used in making its fee awards were sufficiently thorough and 
   Phipps's challenge to the procedures and the court's use of summaries and 
   affidavits prepared by Lead Counsel and other common benefit attorneys is 
   rejected; court's award of fees was substantively reasonable; by adopting 
   the Special Master's analysis, the court fulfilled its responsibility to 
   provide a concise but clear explanation of its rationale for the award; 
   the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying Phipps's 
   request for a benefit award; on Lead Counsel's cross-appeal, the district 
   court did not err in determining that it lacked jurisdiction to order 
   holdbacks from state plaintiffs' recoveries since the state court 
   plaintiffs neither agreed to be part of the federal MDL nor participated 
   in the MDL settlement agreement.