You Missed the Claim Deadline — and the Deadline That Actually Binds You Closed 27 Days Earlier

Every settlement has at least two dates, and they do different jobs. The claim deadline decides whether you get paid. The opt-out deadline — also called the exclusion deadline — decides whether you keep the right to bring your own lawsuit instead. Coverage counts down the first one. The second one is the one with lasting consequences, and it frequently closes earlier.

The Duke settlement is a clean illustration. Afrika Williams v. Duke University Health System, Inc., Case No. 1:22-cv-00727 (M.D.N.C.), covers roughly 872,634 people who used Duke MyChart or MyDuke Health between February 18, 2019 and June 17, 2022, against a $3,743,600 settlement. Its claim deadline is today, August 16, 2026.

Its exclusion deadline was July 20, 2026. That is 27 days earlier. FAQ 11 on the court-authorized site sets it out in full: an exclusion request had to be mailed on paper, signed personally, and “postmarked no later than July 20, 2026” to the administrator's box in Portland, Oregon. There was no online route.

So a person who first hears about this case today has not simply missed a payment. FAQ 10 explains what happened in the meantime, verbatim: “By staying in the Settlement Class, you will give Duke Health a ‘release,’ and all the Court's orders will apply to you and bind you. A release means you cannot sue or be part of any other lawsuit or other legal action against Duke Health about or arising from the claims or issues in this Litigation, Duke Health's use of Tracking Tools, or the alleged Pixel Disclosure.” And the sentence that removes the escape hatch: “Unless you formally exclude yourself from this Settlement, you will release your claims.”

Read those two dates together and the shape of the thing becomes clear. Doing nothing was never neutral. It was a decision that was made on your behalf on July 20, and the claim form was the only thing you had left to gain from it.

We opened the settlement's FAQ page and counted. There are exactly seventeen numbered questions. They cover what is in the notice, why you received it, what the lawsuit is about, what you can get, when benefits arrive, how to file, how to opt out, how to object, who the lawyers are and when the final approval hearing is.

Not one of them addresses a claim submitted after the deadline. There is no FAQ 18. This is not an oversight peculiar to Duke — it is the norm across court-authorized settlement sites, and it is precisely why the question gets answered by aggregators instead of by administrators.

That silence is worth naming plainly, because it cuts both ways. The absence of a stated policy is not a promise that late claims are rejected, and it is certainly not a promise that they are accepted. It means the answer is not published anywhere you can read it, and the only party who can tell you is the administrator.

Call the administrator and ask. For Duke that is Epiq, at (888) 893-8721, open 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. Pacific, Monday through Friday except holidays. Note what that means for a deadline falling on a Sunday: the next moment a human can be reached is Monday morning, after the window has shut.

Whether that call helps is genuinely unknown, and we would rather say so than dress it up. The following is what secondary sources report about industry practice; it is not stated in this settlement's notice or FAQ, and we have not verified it against a court order. Consumer-facing guides generally describe administrators as having some latitude to process late submissions in the weeks after a deadline while distribution is still being calculated, and describe courts as occasionally extending a deadline where notice demonstrably failed. The same guides are equally consistent that neither should be counted on, and that being busy or not reading the mail is not a reason a court recognizes.

What we can say from the primary documents is narrower and more useful: nothing in the Duke notice forecloses the call, and the call costs you nothing. If you have the postcard with the Unique ID and simply ran out of clock, you are the strongest version of this case. Say so, and say it Monday.

Check whether you are in a different case as well. Duke is one of at least six health-system portal settlements. Eligibility is per-hospital and per-date-range, so missing one says nothing about the others. Someone treated at more than one system may still have an open window somewhere else.

Filing your own lawsuit over the same conduct. This is the direct consequence of FAQ 10 quoted above. Unless you mailed a signed exclusion letter postmarked by July 20, the release applies to you, and it covers claims “arising from” the same issues — not merely identical claims.

This is also the single most common misunderstanding we see. People assume that not taking the money leaves their options open. The opposite is true: the release attaches because you stayed in the class, and staying in the class was the default.

Any site that offers to file for you. Only the court-authorized administrator can accept a claim. For this case that is duhssettlement.com and nowhere else. A page that collects your details and promises to submit them is at best redundant and at worst harvesting data from people who have just learned they are out of options — a group worth being careful with.

Waiting for a second distribution. Where residual funds do get redistributed, they go to people whose claims were approved in the first round. A missed claim is not converted into a place in line.

If Duke taught only one transferable lesson, it would be this: do not assume the opt-out deadline comes last. The sequence varies case by case, and the variation is not cosmetic.

Duke: exclusion closed July 20, claims close August 16. Opt-out first, by 27 days. Anyone who discovered the case in August was bound before they could act.

O'Reilly (TCPA, LaSalle County, Illinois): claims close September 28, opt-out and objection close October 6. Opt-out last, by eight days. A person who finds that case on September 29 is too late to be paid but still has a week to remove themselves and keep their own right to sue.

HireVue: opt-out closes roughly two weeks before claims.

Three cases, three orderings. The practical rule that follows is short: when you learn about a settlement, find the exclusion date before you decide whether the claim is worth your time. If that date has already passed, the decision about your legal rights has been made and only the money is still in play. If it has not, you still hold both options, and they are worth weighing against each other.

Each of these has its own court-authorized site, its own class period and its own credential rules. Dates as verified in our reporting this week.

• Delta Dental portal — claims close August 20, 2026
• Memorial Health Services (MemorialCare) MyChart — claims close August 21, 2026, 11:59 p.m. CT
• Call-On-Doc — claims close August 29, 2026
• Banner Health — claims close September 5, 2026
• O'Reilly Automotive — claims close September 28, 2026; opt-out and objection October 6
• Bayhealth and Cone Health — both close October 5, 2026

For any of them, do the exclusion date first. It is the one that cannot be undone.