Korein Tillery Attorneys Honored for Class-Action Settlement that Paid Millions to Missouri Cities

ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- A $55 million settlement achieved by the Korein Tillery law firm in a class action lawsuit that paid millions of dollars to more than 200 cities across Missouri won honors today for two of the firm’s attorneys. Partners John W. Hoffman and Douglas R. Sprong of the nationally recognized Korein Tillery firm were named by Missouri Lawyers Weekly as 2010 award winners in the category for “largest plaintiff wins” for the settlement with T-Mobile over municipal taxes on cell phone service.

The settlement last July was the latest of six successive, multimillion-dollar settlements in lawsuits handled by Korein Tillery on behalf of Missouri cities against telephone companies to recover unpaid municipal taxes for cellular and landline service. Hoffman and Sprong received the same awards from Missouri Lawyers Weekly in 2007 and 2009 for the earlier settlements that also benefitted more than 200 cities statewide, including:

$65 million from AT&T
$52 million from Sprint Nextel
$50 million from SBC
$25 million from Verizon
$6 million from U.S. Cellular

Hoffman and Sprong received the recognition for the 2010 settlement in the Missouri Lawyers Weekly annual awards issue published today honoring top performances by the state’s “most influential lawyers.”

“This recognition emphasizes the value of class action lawsuits as the only way many plaintiffs can address damages they have suffered,” Hoffman said. “Plaintiffs often cannot afford to file an individual lawsuit, but class action suits allow them to seek remedies as members of a group that have all suffered the same damages caused by a company’s conduct. Class action lawyers are consumer advocates in the truest sense of the words.”

Hoffman also pointed out that the legal fees in the T-Mobile case were only 5.6 percent of the settlement amount while almost 95 percent of the millions in the settlement went directly to the cities. “One plaintiff generally can’t hire competent legal representation for such a small percentage of the individual amount they would recover,” he said.

Senior Partner Stephen M. Tillery said, “In addition to honoring these outstanding results for our clients by Korein Tillery attorneys John Hoffman and Doug Sprong, these awards recognize the firm’s unique, industry-leading expertise in class action lawsuits across a wide variety of categories. No other law firm in the country does exactly what we do.”

The awards will be presented to Hoffman, Sprong and two other attorneys for the cities, Howard Paperner and John Mulligan of St. Louis, at the annual Missouri Lawyers Weekly awards luncheon on Jan. 28 at the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark Hotel.

Korein Tillery is a 20-attorney law firm with offices in St. Louis and Chicago that has recovered billions of dollars in verdicts and settlements in a variety of cases across the country involving pension funds, insurance, securities, antitrust, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, environmental contamination, tobacco, computer technology, and consumer fraud. Perhaps best known for its $10 billion trial verdict against Philip Morris, the firm is known nationally for aggressively and successfully pursuing a wide variety of complex cases for its clients. Korein Tillery was named by the National Law Journal to its “Plaintiffs’ Hot List” in 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2008 as one of the top plaintiffs' law firms in all specialties. More information is available at www.koreintillery.com.