A recent Law 360 story by Lauren Berg, “Facebook Users Laud 6% Claims Rate in $725M Privacy Deal”, reports that a class of more than 200 million Facebook users asked a California federal judge to grant final approval to their landmark $725 million deal resolving privacy claims against Meta Platforms Inc. over the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal, touting the nearly 6% claims rate as "well above claims rates approved in other large settlements."

In a 35-page motion, the preliminarily certified class said that after attorney fees, costs and service awards are subtracted from the $725 million settlement fund, "allocation points" will be used to divide the remaining money among authorized claimants, allowing class members to recover an average of about $35 per person.

Under this allocation plan, for every calendar month at any time during the class period — running from May 24, 2007, through Dec. 22, 2022 — that the authorized claimant was a Facebook user with an activated account, one "allocation point" will be assigned, the motion says.  The net settlement fund is then allocated to each claimant pro rata based on each claimant's share of allocation points.

In addition to those monetary benefits, Facebook must also provide discovery and declarations attesting that the data sharing practices at issue have either stopped or are monitored under a 2019 consent decree between the social media platform and the Federal Trade Commission, according to the motion.

The users said the "extensive and successful" notice program — which included individual in-app notices to 685 million Facebook accounts, digital advertisements, a settlement website and public notices in USA Today and People magazine — has led to the submission of more than 15.8 million claims as of July 10.  The settlement administrator did clear out 960,313 as duplicative claims and will assess the remaining 14.9 million to make sure they are valid, the motion says.

"Based on an estimated class of 250 million, the claims rate is already almost 6% — a rate that is well above claims rates approved in other large settlements," the users said, noting that this is the largest-ever data privacy class action settlement.  After the parties unveiled the details of the proposed deal in February, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that Facebook and Gibson Dunn must pay $925,000 to the users, citing the defense's "unusually egregious and persistent" misconduct delaying discovery and gaslighting of opponents in seeking to extract a lower-priced settlement.

After Judge Chhabria in March tentatively signed off on the proposed settlement, class counsel in June requested $181.25 million in fees and $4.1 million in costs, representing 25% of the total settlement.  The attorneys said the amount represents a 1.99 lodestar multiplier for roughly 150,000 hours of attorney work done over the past five years.  The motion for attorney fees noted that nearly every aspect of the case demanded "an extraordinary investment of resources" and class counsel faced "aggressive opposition," making progress "exceedingly difficult."