"Above And Beyond The Call Of Duty": Honorarium Payments To Representative Plaintiffs In Class Proceedings

In Makris v Endo International PLC, 2020 ONSC 5709 [Makris], Justice Glustein of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice opined on a niche area of class actions law—honorarium payments for representative plaintiffs. The claim in Makris arose after the corporate defendant's alleged misrepresentations artificially inflated its stock price. The parties ultimately settled the matter, and Ms. Makris, the representative plaintiff, moved to have the Court approve the settlement. The resolution contemplated a roughly $400,000 cy-près payment to an Investor Protection Clinic and a $15,000 honorarium payment to Ms. Makris for the time and effort she had expended on the class's behalf.

While Justice Glustein approved the cy-près distribution, he rejected the request for an honorarium payment to the representative plaintiff. He noted that honorarium payments were "exceptional" and "rarely done", and available only when a representative plaintiff had "gone well above and beyond