This month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California declined to preliminarily approve a class action settlement of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) claim because the payment to class members was unreasonably low. In Lagos v. Leland Stanford Junior University, the plaintiff filed the class action, alleging the defendant violated the background check disclosure provisions of the FCRA, specifically that it was not a stand-alone document. After months of litigation, the parties settled on a settlement that would pay each class member a net amount of $13.82, demonstrating an 86% discount between the settlement amount and the minimum statutory damages ($100) if the plaintiff fully prevailed on his claim was not warranted.

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