Ashley Madison Class: It Will Be Challenging To Find Claimants Who Don't Want to Be Found

LAW.COM - July 20 - The settlement over Ashley Madison's data breach presents a unique conundrum: How do you find class members who don't want to be found? Those who pursued cases asked a federal judge in Missouri to allow their clients to use pseudonyms, but they weren't successful. Many of them gave fake email or street addresses and they might not want notices of the deal sent to their businesses or home addresses. As a result, lawyers came up with a plan to distribute notices to all online dating users through People and Sports Illustrated magazines and on banner ads, rather than emails or mailboxes. They also plan to advertise the agreement "in a prominent location" on the websites of the lawyers' firms. And the settlement will have its own website, although the URL won't make reference to Ashley Madison or any other information identifying it "as being related in any way to the substance of this litigation or purpose of ashleymadison.com." But not all the $11.2M will go to class members. The eight plaintiffs' law firms plan to seek ~30% of the $11.2M.