Documents from the House v. NCAA settlement reveal how much money the plaintiffs, including former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, and the plaintiff law firms could make from the case.
Plaintiffs
The class representatives, or the student-athletes who initiated the lawsuits and represent all student-athletes, intend to receive compensation for their involvement in the case.
“Class Counsel also intend to seek service awards for each of the Class Representatives. Based on their contributions and commitments, the Settlement Agreement contemplates awards of up to $125,000 each for Grant House, Sedona Prince and Tymir Oliver (the “NIL Plaintiffs”), and up to $10,000 each for DeWayne Carter and Nya Harrison (the “Carter Plaintiffs”),” the settlement document reads.
The settlement includes House v. NCAA, a lawsuit started in 2020 dealing with athlete’s ability to profit from their name, image, and likeness. House, former TCU basketball player Sedona Prince, and former Illinois football player Tymir Oliver could receive up to $125,000 each from their part of the settlement.
The House settlement combined with Carter v. NCAA, another class suit filed in 2023 that deals with monetary compensation from the NCAA to current and former athletes. Former Duke football player DeWayne Carter and Stanford soccer player Nya Harrison could receive up to $10,000 in the settlement. Both antitrust cases are represented by the same law firms and have already begun to influence NCAA financial decisions.
Plaintiff Lawyers
The two plaintiff law firms in House v. NCAA are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in a nontraditional fee structure for their work on the case.
Law firms Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and Winston & Strawn reported that they have billed over 72,000 hours on the case since 2020. For compensation, they have requested a fee structure that would give them $20 million up front. Additionally, they asked for a percentage of the back payments that the NCAA are expected to give to former student-athletes as compensation for missed NIL opportunities. The law firms’ cut of these back payments could total up to $495.2 million.
In what Reuters calls the most novel part of the payment structure, the law firms also requested a share of the funds that schools would use to pay current student-athletes. Each yearly fee installment would require court approval. The plaintiffs estimated that portion of their compensation could aggregate up to $250 million in 20 years.
Lead lawyers from both of the firms, Steve Berman and Jeffrey Kessler, both argued that the compensation is fair given the magnitude and historic nature of the settlement.
Presiding judge Claudia Wilken must approve the compensation structure that the firms requested. Wilken must also finalize the settlement itself, which is still handling litigation from opposition, including opposition from swimmers.
The landmark case started when Grant House challenged the NCAA’s policy to not allow swimmers to profit from their name, image, and likeness. It has already allowed student-athletes to begin accepting NIL deals. It is also set to raise expenses for schools, eliminate team scholarship caps, and implement roster limits.
House would make more if he fell off his bike due to a Crack in the road..
Lawyers usually make 40%..standard fee.
Everyone keeps talking roster limits..from what I understand, swim and dive is staying at 30..football way up to 105..as far as revenue sharing, schools have a CHOICE to share up to 22%.. or nothing. I read the entire decision, and it is very interesting depending on how you look at it..Top schools make about what? A billion a year just on football?? I think that some serious thinking and rational discussion is missing..instead I am reading panic scenarios..not a good place to make workable solutions.
The lawyers’ share of this is criminal if it’s in the $100s of millions. It always is in these big class actions.
Is House just greedy or deluded–or, probably, both? He’s like the basketball players at Dartmouth who want to unionize. They’re comical. It’s only through the good graces of past administrators at Dartmouth and every other college in America that they have basketball programs at all: They don’t have to have a basketball team–just as they don’t have to have a swimming program. It’s a gift, a benefit, to the students/student-athletes–one that costs the school(s) a considerable amount of money every year.
Nobody is clamoring to see Dartmouth play basketball, just as nobody had any interest in watching House swim. No commercial demand. What’s more, I’m pretty sure that most if not all of the Dartmouth basketball players are getting… Read more »
Very well said!!
No athletic scholarships at Dartmouth right?
But need based financial aid
Totally not worth the money for all the hate he will receive the rest of his life for ruining college swimming.
wake me up when michael phelps decides to finally use his wealth, image & contacts to create a professional domestic US summer swim league.
For the law firm, this works out to $6,877.77, repeating of course, an hour.
Lawyers ruined college swimming.
And he is not going to make the Olympics ever
LOSER
your logic would mean that there are a lot of losers
We find the things in others ……….
So it costs a years salary of an entry level engineer at a big tech company to destroy college swimming