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Judge OKs $3.2M deal to end BIPA class action vs Corner Bakery over worker fingerprint scans

COOK COUNTY RECORD

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Judge OKs $3.2M deal to end BIPA class action vs Corner Bakery over worker fingerprint scans

Lawsuits
Corner bakery

Mr. Blue MauMau from USA / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

About two weeks after putting a hold on a $3.2 million settlement, a federal judge has decided to sign off on a deal between the owners of the Corner Bakery Café restaurant chain and a group of more than 4,000 restaurant workers suing them for allegedly violating their rights under an Illinois biometric privacy law.

Under the terms of the settlement, each of the workers would receive about $800, while the plaintiffs’ attorneys will reap about one-third of the total settlement funds, minus some administrative costs.

The plaintiffs have been represented by the firm of Werman Salas P.C., of Chicago.

On June 12, U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso granted preliminary approval to the settlement struck between CBC Restaurant Corp. and the lawyers for named plaintiff Ebony Jones.

Jones and the lawyers from the Werman Salas firm had sued Corner Bakery in 2019 in Cook County Circuit Court. The class action lawsuit accused Corner Bakery of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The case was removed by Corner Bakery to federal court.

Specifically, the lawsuit said Corner Bakery had broken the law when it required workers to scan their fingerprints when punching in and out of work shifts, without first securing the workers’ express authorization to conduct the scans and without first providing the workers with allegedly required notices concerning how the company would store, use, share and ultimately destroy the scanned fingerprint data.

The class action was very similar to a host of hundreds of such lawsuits that have been brought in recent years in Cook County court and elsewhere in Illinois against employers, under the Illinois BIPA law. Such lawsuits have typically targeted employers over their use of biometric time clocks, which require workers to verify their identity by scanning a fingerprint or some other biometric identifier when beginning and ending a work shift.

The systems are designed to limit or eliminate so-called “punch fraud,” a practice in which workers deceive employers by having another employee punch them in or out when they are not at work, resulting in potentially large sums paid to workers for hours they did not work. However, the lawsuits assert employers did not follow the technical requirements of the BIPA law when implementing those systems.

Workers typically have not asserted so-called “concrete injuries” under the law, such as even a heightened risk of identity theft from compromised data. However, under an Illinois Supreme Court ruling, workers merely have to prove the employers did not meet the notice and consent requirements in order to make nearly every punch in and out of work shifts count as a violation of the BIPA law, eligible to make employers shell out potentially many millions of dollars in damages.

In this case, the plaintiffs asserted more than 4,000 Corner Bakery workers were included in the class of plaintiffs eligible for a payout from the company for allegedly violating the BIPA law. That class included all Corner Bakery employees who worked for the company in Illinois from 2014-2020.

Corner Bakery and Werman Salas eventually ended up in a mediation session before a retired judge. From that mediation, the parties reached a deal, under which Corner Bakery agreed to pay $3.21 million to end the matter. About $1 million of that total would go to Werman Salas, under the deal. Jones would receive $7,500, while class members would get about $800 each.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys asserted the deal was in keeping with many other BIPA settlements approved in Cook County and Chicago federal courts, and in courts elsewhere in Illinois.

They presented a chart, for instance, showing:

  • A $964 payout to 1,501 workers suing Bob Evans Farms LLC in Tazewell County. Attorneys received one-third of the total settlement fund, or $482,369.
  • A $768-$1,085 payout to 1,378 workers suing the Washington & Jane Smith Home assisted living centers in Chicago federal court. Lawyers got $451,548.
  • A $270 net payout to 6,000 workers suing Life Time Fitness in Cook County court. Attorneys were awarded $800,000, or one-third of the settlement.
  • A $450 payout to 2,200 workers suing communications infrastructure provider Zayo Group in Cook County court. Attorneys received 40% of the gross settlement, or $407,256.
On May 28, Judge Alonso declined to approve the settlement. He said the deal did not sufficiently protect the rights of class members to object to the deal or appeal, if they wished.

On June 2, the Werman Salas attorneys presented another motion to approve the settlement.

Ten days later, Judge Alonso signed off, saying the deal now could be approved, and noting the process and terms by which would-be class members could object.

The judge scheduled a hearing for October to potentially grant final approval to the settlement.

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