Peco Foods Data Breach Class Action Settlement ($950K)

Data Breach · Claims Open

Current Status

Claims are open. The deadline to submit a Claim Form is November 9, 2026, at 11:59:59 p.m. Central for an online submission, or with a November 9, 2026 postmark by mail. The final approval hearing is set for December 14, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Central at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. No final approval order has been entered, and no payment date has been announced.

A second date lands first and is easier to miss. October 12, 2026 is the deadline both to exclude yourself and to object — almost a month before the claim window shuts. Opting out is the only way to keep the right to sue Peco Foods separately over this breach, and that door closes first.

What Changed Recently?

The claim window opened this fall on a breach that happened nearly three years ago. Peco Foods Inc. is one of the largest poultry processors in the United States, headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and the settlement concerns a data breach that occurred on or around December 4, 2023, in which the complaint alleges an unauthorized third party accessed personal identifiable information belonging to the plaintiffs and the settlement class.

Two dates in the record are worth putting side by side. The incident is dated on or around December 4, 2023. The Notice of Data Breach that defines who is in the class went out on or around July 24, 2024 — roughly seven and a half months later. The settlement documents do not explain the gap, and the notice does not publish how many people were sent a letter, so neither figure should be assumed from the fund size.

Nine named plaintiffs brought the case, which is captioned Ryan, et al. v. Peco Foods Inc., Case No. 63-CV-2025-900067, in the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. It settled for a $950,000 common fund before any class was certified for trial.

Peco Foods denies the claims. The notice states that the company denies it did anything wrong and denies that the incident caused any harm to the representative plaintiffs or to the settlement class members whose data may have been accessed, and that no court or other judicial entity has made any judgment, finding or determination that Peco has any liability for these claims or did anything wrong. The court has not decided who is right; both sides agreed to settle to avoid the cost and risk of a trial.

Who Qualifies?

The settlement class is people who reside in the United States and received written notice from Peco Foods that their personal identifiable information may have been compromised in the breach. The class definition the settlement website publishes ties that to a specific mailing: individual U.S. residents whose information was accessed or acquired in the breach that is the subject of the Notice of Data Breach Peco sent on or around July 24, 2024.

Peco's own records decide who that is, so in practice the question is whether a notice letter arrived.

Excluded from the class are the judge presiding over the litigation, that judge's staff and immediate family; Peco's officers, directors, members and shareholders; anyone who timely and validly requests exclusion, along with their successors and assigns; and any person found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be criminally guilty of initiating, causing, aiding or abetting the breach, or who pleads nolo contendere to such a charge.