Editor's note: This article has been revised from a previous version to correct certain errors, including to correctly spell the name of an attorney who filed lawsuits referenced in the article, and to correctly identify which law firms filed one of the referenced lawsuits.
More class action lawsuits were added over the holidays to the ranks of thousands of similar big-money claims pending against employers in Cook County Circuit Court under Illinois' stringent biometrics privacy law.
Targets of the lawsuits include confectioner Ferrara Candy Company; manufacturers, including Sonoco Teq, Dynamic Manufacturing, shelving systems maker Edsal Manufacturing and Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail; and Ricky Rockets Fuel Center operator Heidner Properties, among others.
The lawsuits were filed from Dec. 22-Dec. 30 in Cook County Circuit Court.
Attorneys from the Beaumont Costales firm, of Chicago, filed five of the lawsuits:
- Crone v Progress Rail, filed on Dec. 27
- Marble v Beauty Systems, filed on Dec. 27
- Cook v Fuyao, filed on Dec. 27
- Marinopoulos v Heidner Properties, filed Dec. 29
- Aguirre v Edsal Manufacturing, filed Dec. 29
- Rausch v Sonoco Teq, LLC filed by Peiffer Wolf, Carr, Kane, Conway & Wise, of Chicago, Dec. 22
- The Sulaiman Law Group along with Vlahakis Law Group filed Lacy v Dynamic Manufacturing and
- Kelly v Northern Glass, filed Dec. 30
- Lacey v Ferrara Candy Company, also represented by the Vlahakis Law Group, filed Dec. 30.
The lawsuits are part of continuosly rising tide of similar class actions, accusing employers and other companies of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA.)
Such lawsuits have been filed since 2015, when a small cadre of plaintiffs' lawyers first used the BIPA law to file such class actions.
The law made national headlines in 2020 and 2021, when over a million Facebook users in Illinois received checks after a major class-action settlement alleging violations of the BIPA law was settled for $650 million. Google then settled similar claims out of court as well, opening the door for Illinois residents to submit claims for a share of a $100 million settlement fund.
BIPA violation class action complaints have continued escalating in Cook County and other Illinois courts.
Facebook and Google may have set a precedent, but major players aren't alone. More class action lawsuits continue to fuel the surge in Cook County Circuit Court with parties seeking what can amount to potentially huge payouts from employers accused of BIPA violations.
Under the BIPA law, plaintiffs are allowed to demand damages of $1,000-$5,000 per violation. The law has been interpreted to define individual violations as each instance in which someone’s biometrics are scanned. In employment cases, this could mean employers could be liable for up to $5,000 for each time an employee scanned a fingerprint in the workplace.
What this means, is employers could be looking at potential payouts well into the millions, if not billions of dollars, depending on the size of the company, among other factors, should an employer lose at trial.
These lawsuits have increasingly turned into big settlements for plaintiffs’ lawyers, as employers have struggled to find effective defenses to either fight the allegations in court or, at least, reduce their potential payouts.
Business advocates have noted this is an alarming trend that isn't just for the big players. Lawsuits run the gamut, exposing businesses of all sizes to the threat of litigation potentially massive litigation.
The Illinois Supreme Court has specifically declared plaintiffs need not prove they were actually harmed by improper collection or disclosure of their biometric data to press their potentially massive lawsuits. Compounding this, Illinois courts have also specifically declared that judges should not factor the potentially ruinous payouts faced by businesses when deciding the reach and scope of the BIPA law.
Small businesses looking for workplace efficiency through technology may face the same potential fines as corporate giants without the financial backing to weather a potentially devestating storm.
Since March 2022, the state high court and other Illinois judges have rejected efforts to classify workplace BIPA claims as workers’ compensation claims, which would have kicked the cases out of court. The courts have also so far declined to limit how far in the past plaintiffs can claim damages.
Plaintiffs want to wage complaints using a five-year statute of limitations. Defendents argue it should be more like 1 to 2 years.
The Illinois Supreme Court is expected to soon deliver a decision on that question.
Most lawsuits brought under the BIPA law are similar in scope. They generally accuse companies of improperly requiring workers to provide some type of biometric identifier in a variety of settings. In most, if not all cases, plaintiffs claim this was done before they first obtained written consent from the workers or supplied the workers with certain notices allegedly required by the BIPA law, disclosing how the employers would collect, store, use, share and ultimately destroy the scanned fingerprint data.
Because claims are so similar, and the state has somewhat relaxed its stance toward the plaintiff claims as to "actual harm", a now growing number of law firms are paddling out to also ride the wave.