If the federal district court in the District of Columbia grants final approval, a settlement fund of $63 million will be created Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA federal district court has granted provisional approval to a proposed settlement in a class action suit over the breaches of OPM databases on current and former federal employees.
The suit relates to two separate breaches in 2014-2015 involving a total of more than 20 million people—one of a database of personnel records and the other of a database of persons on whom security checks had been run for gaining access to federal facilities. Both contained personally identifying information and in some cases highly personal information such as financial and legal records and fingerprints.
The incidents triggered the resignation of the then-OPM director and Congress later provided for free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for victims.
According to an announcement on www.opmdatabreach.com, if the federal district court in the District of Columbia grants final approval, a settlement fund of $63 million will be created.
It says that to be eligible, individuals must join the suit by December 23 and “your personal information must have been compromised in the data breaches, and you must also have suffered an out-of-pocket expense or lost compensable time: to purchase a credit monitoring product, credit or identity theft protection product, or other product or service designed to identify or remediate the data breaches; to access, freeze or unfreeze a credit report with a credit reporting agency; or as a result of an identity theft incident or to mitigate an identity theft incident.”
It says that eligible claimants would receive the greater of $700 or the actual amount of their loss, up to $10,000, “unless the total value of all valid claims, plus any incentive awards to named plaintiffs, exceeds the amount of money in the fund.”
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