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The Lawsuit Ledger

Civil suits, class actions, False Claims Act cases and settlements — tracked on three numbers, not one: the figure announced, what the suit cost, and what Americans actually got back.

Entries on the record

This ledger is building. Every entry below was checked against a primary source — a court filing or order, a Justice Department, FTC or attorney general release, or the official settlement record — before it was listed. Criminal prosecutions are not here; they live on the Fraud Ledger. This page is the civil side: who sued, what it cost, and where the money ended up.

Civil fraud recoveries · U.S. Department of Justice and whistleblower (qui tam) suits · Federal courts nationwide

False Claims Act recoveries, fiscal year 2025 — a record $6.8 billion year

Who filed — and where
Brought by the Justice Department and by whistleblowers — relators — suing on the government's behalf under the False Claims Act. DOJ announced the fiscal-year totals on January 16, 2026, for the year ending September 30, 2025.
What it is about
The False Claims Act is the federal government's main civil weapon against fraud on public programs: false billing of Medicare and Medicaid, procurement and customs fraud, and cybersecurity non-compliance by federal contractors.
The announced figure
Settlements and judgments exceeded $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2025 — the largest single-year total in the Act's history, taking the total since 1986 past $85 billion. More than $5.7 billion involved health care. Whistleblower suits produced more than $5.3 billion of the total, and a record 1,297 new qui tam suits were filed in the year.
The cost side — as documented
Whistleblowers are paid out of the recovery by law — relators typically receive 15 to 30 percent of a successful qui tam case, and DOJ's statistics put whistleblowers' fiscal 2025 share at more than $330 million. The Justice Department's own litigation costs are not separately broken out in its release — not disclosed.
What Americans actually got back
FCA money is paid back to the defrauded programs and the Treasury — Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE among them. There is no per-person cheque in a False Claims Act case: the return to Americans is restored program money, collected from the companies and individuals who took it.
Status
Fiscal 2025 totals announced January 16, 2026. The headline includes two large pharmaceutical trial verdicts — about $1.6 billion and about $949 million — that remain under appeal; a verdict is not a collection until the appeals end. Watching.

Consumer class action + FTC / CFPB / state settlement · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (MDL No. 2800)

Equifax data breach settlement — the “$125” that wasn't

Who filed — and where
Suits by consumers, consolidated as a multidistrict case, alongside actions by the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and 50 states and territories. Global settlement announced July 22, 2019; final approval of the consumer class settlement December 19, 2019 (Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr.); upheld by the Eleventh Circuit in 2021.
What it is about
Equifax failed to patch a known vulnerability, and intruders took the personal information of about 147 million people — names, dates of birth, 145.5 million Social Security numbers and 209,000 payment card numbers.
The announced figure
The headline was “at least $575 million, and potentially up to $700 million.” Of that: $300 million was a consumer fund (rising toward $425 million only if documented out-of-pocket claims required it), $175 million went to the states, and $100 million was a civil penalty to the CFPB.
The cost side — as documented
The court approved $77.5 million in attorneys' fees and about $1.4 million in expenses for class counsel — roughly 20 percent of the $380.5 million consumer cash fund — and the Eleventh Circuit upheld the fee award in 2021. Claims administration and the credit monitoring programme were also paid for out of Equifax's settlement obligations.
What Americans actually got back
The famous cash option — “up to $125” if you already had credit monitoring — was capped by the settlement's own terms: only $31 million of the fund was set aside for those payments. Within days of the announcement the FTC publicly warned that, with the volume of claims filed, each payment would be “nowhere near the $125,” urged people to take the free credit monitoring instead, and claimants had to prove they already had monitoring to qualify for cash at all. Documented out-of-pocket losses (up to $20,000) and time claims were paid from the fund starting in December 2022, with further prepaid-card payments in November 2024. The administrator's single final tally of cash actually paid to consumers has not been published — not yet disclosed, watching.
Status
Settled and largely administered. The claims deadline closed January 22, 2024; free identity-restoration services continue to January 2029.

Consumer class action (MDL No. 3019) · U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri

T-Mobile data breach class action — $350 million fund, and a fee award cut down on appeal

Who filed — and where
Dozens of consumer suits filed after the August 2021 breach, consolidated in the Western District of Missouri. Settlement agreed July 2022; final approval June 29, 2023 (Judge Brian C. Wimes).
What it is about
A criminal intrusion exposed records belonging to about 76.6 million current, former and prospective T-Mobile customers — names, Social Security numbers, driver's licence numbers, phone numbers and device identifiers.
The announced figure
A $350 million settlement fund for the class, plus a commitment to spend $150 million more on data security — headlined together as a $500 million settlement.
The cost side — as documented
Class counsel first won the full $78.75 million they asked for — 22.5 percent of the fund. The Eighth Circuit reversed that award on July 29, 2024, holding that at 9.6 times counsel's hourly lodestar it was an unearned windfall. On remand, the district court approved a reduced fee of $45,771,790.40 (January 16, 2025), plus $170,845.18 in expenses and $2,500 service awards. Notice and administration costs also come out of the fund.
What Americans actually got back
Class members could claim documented losses up to $25,000, or take an alternative cash payment of $25 — $100 for the California subclass — plus two years of identity-defence services. Distribution of payments began May 30, 2025, per the official settlement website: nearly four years after the breach. The total actually paid out to class members has not been published in a single figure — not yet disclosed, watching.
Status
Settled; fee award reduced on appeal and remand; payment distribution under way from May 2025.

Consumer class action (MDL No. 3114) · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas

AT&T data breach settlement — $177 million approved in October 2026, not yet paid

Who filed — and where
Consumer suits over two separate breaches, consolidated in the Northern District of Texas. Settlement signed May 30, 2025; final approval October 2, 2026 (Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater).
What it is about
Two incidents: a compromise dating to 2019 whose data set — including Social Security numbers — appeared on the dark web and was announced on March 30, 2024; and a 2024 download of call-log data from AT&T's workspace on the Snowflake cloud platform, announced July 12, 2024.
The announced figure
Two non-reversionary cash funds totalling $177 million: $149 million for the first incident and $28 million for the second. “Non-reversionary” means money left over does not go back to AT&T.
The cost side — as documented
In its October 2, 2026 order the court approved attorneys' fees of exactly one-third of each fund: $49,666,666.66 and $9,333,333.33 — $59 million in total — paid from the funds before claimants see a dollar. The judge separately flagged settlement administration costs as a matter that will keep the court's attention; the final administration figure is not yet stated in the record — watching.
What Americans actually got back
Nothing yet — not yet paid, watching. The administrator, Kroll, received 4,918,073 claim forms. Kroll's estimates in the court record put the tiered cash payments at roughly $39–$40 for first-incident claimants whose Social Security number was exposed, $7.50–$8.10 for other first-incident claimants, and $6.50–$7.10 for second-incident claimants; documented losses are payable up to $5,000 and $2,500 respectively. Those are the administrator's estimates in a court filing, not amounts anyone has received.
Status
Final approval granted October 2, 2026. Distribution follows the settlement's effective date; this entry will be updated when payments are documented.

State attorneys general settlement · All 50 states and the District of Columbia, led by the New York Attorney General

Intuit (TurboTax) — $141 million for “free” tax filing that wasn't

Who filed — and where
A multistate investigation and settlement led by New York Attorney General Letitia James and signed by the attorneys general of all 50 states and the District of Columbia; announced May 4, 2022.
What it is about
Intuit used “free, free, free” advertising and deceptive design to steer low-income taxpayers — people who qualified to file free through the IRS Free File program — into paid TurboTax products, for tax years 2016 through 2018.
The announced figure
$141 million in restitution to nearly 4.4 million consumers across the country.
The cost side — as documented
Roughly $2.5 million of the $141 million was allocated to the administrative costs of the settlement itself; the rest was restitution. There were no class-counsel fees — the case was brought by the states, not by private lawyers working for a percentage.
What Americans actually got back
About $30 for each tax year a consumer was charged — up to roughly $90 for someone hit in all three years. Nobody had to file a claim: the states identified eligible taxpayers from filing records and the administrator mailed cheques automatically, beginning in May 2023 — a year after the announcement.
Status
Settled and distributed (2023). Intuit also had to suspend the “free, free, free” campaign.

How to read this ledger: the three numbers

1 · Announced
The figure in the headline when a settlement or judgment lands. It is the largest number the case will ever have, and it is the only one most people ever hear.
2 · Cost
What the process itself takes: attorneys' fees (often a fifth to a third of a class fund), claims-administration and notice costs, and penalties paid to agencies rather than to people. Every cost figure here is copied from a court order, a filing or an agency release — if the documents do not state it, the entry says so.
3 · Actually returned
Restitution, refunds and claims actually paid out to Americans — as documented by settlement administrators, agencies or courts. Per-person where the record states it. If payouts are capped, reduced pro rata, still pending or simply never published as a total, the entry says exactly that.

Why the three numbers differ: fees and administration come off the top; in government settlements a large share is often penalties to the Treasury or the states, not payments to people; some settlement funds cap the cash option far below the headline per-person figure; most eligible people never file a claim; and verdicts can shrink or vanish on appeal. A settlement is not finished when it is announced — it is finished when the money reaches people. This ledger follows entries until it does, and marks the ones still open as watching.