MGA Agrees to Recommended Fee Award in Bratz Case of $108 Million

The National Law Journal is reporting that MGA has agreed to accept a Special Master's recommendation that it recover $108 million in attorneys' fees in connection with the Bratz doll trade secret fight.

The recommendation was issued on June 20 by attorney Robert O’Brien, who was appointed by the court to help manage the case, but only recently disclosed, according to the NLJ.
MGA is seeking $129 million in attorneys' fees and $32 million in costs after a jury rejected a claim by Barbie maker Mattel that MGA infringed on Mattel’s copyright of the Bratz doll concept. Mattel alleged that designer Carter Bryant formulated the Bratz concept while working at Mattel, before the designer was hired by MGA.

Mattel is disputing O’Brien’s recommendation, and wants to see more than 9,000 pages of billing invoices that MGA turned over, the NLJ reports.

Depriving Mattel of those documents "would be a miscarriage of justice and a deprivation of due process," wrote Mattel's lawyer, Michael Zeller, a partner at Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan.

The NLJ reports that, according to Mattel's documents, O'Brien recommended that MGA receive $84.7 million in fees associated with defending Mattel's copyright infringement claim and $23.4 million related to pursuing the trade secrets claims.

All we can say is - holy cow!