Lemonade Inc. has become the latest company that has settled in a string of class action lawsuits brought upon by Illinois' Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA) that was passed in 2008. Recently Illinois residents received bank deposits from Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta) in the amount of $397 after Facebook settled their lawsuit. Lemonade, an insurance company founded in 2015, initially made a splash with their colorful modern imagery & easy to use app where you can file claims. The company prides itself on combination of modern technology with environmentally friendly business practices where users can easily look up their policy & make claims via their app with no paper involved.
It seems though that exact technology is what got them in the hot seat. Lemonade users can instantly file claims along with evidence by recording a video through the app which is uploaded along with the claim. What seems like a modern convenience has run afoul of Illinois' biometric privacy laws which states "Biometric information means any information, regardless of how it is captured, converted, stored, or shared, based on an individual's biometric identifier used to identify an individual (740 ILCS 1410.)" Under this law companies must inform users in writing that biometric information is being collected or stored, state the purpose of the biometric information as well as the length of time the information is to be collected, stored & used. The user must also agree to this.
This means that if Lemonade never warned its users about the videos being made for the claims, especially since those videos were most likely used as evidence to identify the claim holders, then that was a violation of BIPA. Further compounding the violations would be if there was no agreement to release that information by the user, which would most likely always be the case if there was no warning about biometric information being collected in the first place. Another violation would be if Lemonade scanned the videos (which they allegedly have stated that they have an AI that scans the videos for fraud.)
Whatever the case may be...Lemonade Inc. has settled for a whopping $4,000,000. The breakdown of the settlement will be as followed:
$3,000,000 towards Illinois claimants
$1,000,000 towards claimants in the rest of the nation
Attorney fees, marketing costs to get the word out & general settlement administration costs have not been decided yet, but attorney fees are capped at 33-1/3% of the settlement. Class representatives may be paid up to $2500 each (subject to court approval.)
Who is eligible?
Policyholders in the United States that provided video claims to Lemonade between June 25, 2019 & May 27, 2021.
How do you submit a claim?
You can find the court case details here
To submit a claim you can visit the settlement site by going to https://www.lemonadebipasettlement.com
To receive a paper claim form call toll free 1-866-977-1153
Paper claim forms can be mailed to:
Lemonade Settlement Administrator
P.O. Box 5376
Portland, OR 97228-5376
The process is pretty straight forward. You go to "submit a claim" & once on the claim form fill in all of the information. You then need to state if you were a policyholder in Illinois or not then hit submit. Payments will be distributed shortly after the final hearing on whether or not the settlement is fair on August 25, 2022.
DEADLINES
August 8, 2022 — Deadline for class members to file opt-out requests
August 8, 2022 — Deadline for class members to file objections to the terms of the Settlement
August 22,2022 — Deadline for class members to submit a Claim
August 25, 2022 — Final Fairness Hearing