A class action lawsuit accuses snack food seller Eby-Brown of violating Illinois' stringent biometrics privacy law by using so-called biometric cameras to monitor its workers on the job, allegedly improperly scanning their faces.
The lawsuit asserts the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) requires companies to get written consent from employees before gathering their biometric information and inform workers of "where their biometrics are being stored, for how long Defendant will keep the biometrics, and what might happen to this valuable information. The lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
"Unfortunately for the Plaintiff and class members, none of these directives were followed," the suit says.
Eby-Brown was acquired in 2022 by Coremark.
According to the complaint, Eby-Brown uses biometric cameras to monitor the work of certain workers.
"Defendant has a separate biometric camera for each of these workers," the suit says. "This allows Defendant to associate the information from each of its respective biometric cameras with a particular worker. These cameras collect and store the biometric data of Defendant’s workers by scanning their facial geometry."
The lawsuit seeks $5,000 for each willful or reckless violation of the law and $1,000 for each negligent violation.
The Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the BIPA law to allow plaintiffs to demand damages for each time an employee may be required to scan their fingerprints at work, with no limit, going back over the preceding five years. When multiplied across entire workforces, damages could quickly soar into the many millions of dollars.
With such potentially high payouts at stake, plaintiffs' lawyers have filed thousands of such lawsuits against employers throughout Illinois in the past eight years.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Roberto Luis Costales and William H. Beaumont, of Beaumont Costales LLC.
Cox v. Eby-Brown Company, LLC., Cook County Circuit Court, 2023CH08644