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The AM Law Litigation Daily

August 12, 2009

Munger Tolles helps secure $500 million class action settlement for Social Security beneficiaries

By Ross Rodd

San Francisco federal district court judge Claudia Wilken gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a class action settlement estimated to be worth more than $500 million to 80,000 people who have been denied benefits by the Social Security Administration since 2007. The settlement is a victory for Munger, Tolles & Olson and a team of public interest lawyers, who represented some 200,000 people whose benefits were denied or suspended because of outstanding arrest warrants. Here's The Recorder's story on the settlement, under which the government also agreed to change its policy (though it did not admit liability).

The plaintiffs alleged that in denying Social Security benefits to as many as 200,000 people since 2000, the government wrongly applied a law designed to prevent wrongdoers from using government benefits to flee prosecution. In one of the more egregious cases, name plaintiff Rosa Martinez was denied benefits in 2008, when the government found a 1980 warrant issued for a Miami drug suspect with that name--even though the suspect described in the arrest warrant was eight inches taller and 35 pounds heavier than the Rosa Martinez seeking Social Security benefits, who had never been arrested, or even to Miami.

"This is a situtation [in which], if any reasonable human being was looking these things over, they would have known" there was a mistake, said Munger, Tolles & Olson partner David Fry. Fry told the Litigation Daily that Munger Tolles got involved in the case in August 2008, after the public interest group Disability Rights California told partner Charles Siegal that a coalition of public interest organizations was looking for a firm to provide pro bono help with the class action.

"We put together the complaint, the motion for preliminary judgment, and summary judgment papers," Fry said. "[The public interest lawyers] brought incredible depth on the substantive law." Four Munger Tolles lawyers and three paralegals put in 1,000 hours before the plaintiffs and the government reached a settlement in July; they've logged another 250 hours since the deal was struck.

The public interest team included National Senior Citizens Law Center, the Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center, Disability Rights California, and the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County. The settlement agreement calls for $483,000 to be divided among the lawyers, including $141,000 for Munger Tolles. Fry says the firm's portion will go toward costs associated with this case and other pro bono work.