A memorandum filed on Tuesday asked the Western District of Missouri court overseeing the multidistrict litigation to grant final approval to the $350 million settlement after a data breach impacted about 76.6 million T-Mobile current, former, and prospective subscribers. The filing claims that the reaction from settlement class members, who have thus far submitted more than 1.5 million claims, has been “overwhelmingly positive and strongly supports final approval.”
The consolidated case has roots in 2021 when one or more cybercriminals exploited T-Mobile’s data security protocols and gained access to internal servers containing the personally identifiable information of T-Mobile customers. A large subset of the information was subsequently put up for sale on the dark web, the complaint alleged.
T-Mobile came public with news of the breach in August 2021, and later, in November 2021, revised its estimate of impacted individuals upwards from 50 million to 76.6 million.
Judge Brian C. Wimes granted preliminary approval of the settlement in July, which provides not only monetary relief, but credit monitoring services and also assistance to victims of identity fraud. Counsel moved for about $79 million in attorneys’ fees in November. Some class members objected to the fee request, in addition to other perceived issues with the settlement.
The motion said the court should consider and overrule those 13 substantive objections, calling the resolution “a tremendous result for the Settlement Class, securing valuable benefits tailored to the facts of the case, through a $350 million Settlement Fund that is the second largest created in any MDL data breach litigation.”
In addition, the motion said that only 13,212 class members have requested exclusion from the class though more than ten times the number have filed claims. “Based on the claims received to date, Class Counsel believe that claimants will receive 100% or more of the monetary amount claimed,” the filing added.
The final approval hearing is scheduled for Friday in Kansas City, Mo.
Stueve Siegel Hanson LLP, Keller Rorhback L.L.P., and Hausfeld LLP are interim co-lead counsel. T-Mobile is represented by Alston & Bird LLP and Spencer Fane LLP.
