Truck and trailer rental giant U-Haul has become one of the latest targets of a class action lawsuit under Illinois' stringent biometric privacy law, accusing the company of allegedly improperly scanning the faces of customers to verify their identity when they attempt to rent equipment.
On April 24, attorneys Michael Fradin, of Skokie, and James L. Simon, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against U-Haul Company of Illinois.
Michael Fradin
| lawyer.com
The lawsuit claims U-Haul allegedly violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) when the company required customers to submit to facial scans as part of the ID verification process when going through the rental lease signing process.
The complaint asserts U-Haul violated BIPA by not first securing written consent from customers before scanning their faces, nor did it provide customers with notices allegedly required under the BIPA law explaining how the scanned data would be stored, used, shared and ultimately destroyed.
The complaint does not specify how the face scans were conducted.
However, according to U-Haul's website, customers must provide a drivers license when renting equipment, which U-Haul scans to confirm the license is valid and the identity of the person seeking to rent the equipment matches that presented on the ID.
The lawsuit against U-Haul is one of a growing number of lawsuits filed in recent months under the BIPA law by Fradin and Simon, leveling accusations against certain companies of allegedly improper customer face scans.
And those lawsuits, in turn, have been but a part of the growing trend of such lawsuits filed under BIPA in Illinois courts against companies, and particularly operators of apps, such as dating apps and cryptocurrency apps, which require users to upload photos of their faces and government-issued photo IDs to verify their identities when registering for access to the sites, or when signing on to use the sites later.
Like those other lawsuits, the action against U-Haul could prove costly, if the case is allowed to proceed.
Cole and her lawyers are asking the court to award them damages of $1,000-$5,000 per violation, as allowed under the BIPA law.
In recent decisions, the Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the BIPA law to define individual violations as each time a business allegedly scans facial geometry, fingerprints or other so-called biometric identifiers of customers or employees, not just the first such scan.
Further, they have ruled the statute of limitations for BIPA violations can reach back as far as five years.
Thus, businesses could be on the hook for potentially ruinous damages running well into the many millions of dollars under BIPA, should a court multiply damages across an entire customer base or work force.
It is unknown how many people may be included in the class action. The lawsuit estimates only that plaintiffs believe there are more than 1,000. The class action could potentially include nearly everyone who rented U-Haul equipment in Illinois in the past five years.
Illinois annually ranks among U-Haul's top states for outbound migration, meaning tens of thousands of households annually use U-Haul equipment to leave the state to relocate elsewhere in the country.