Comcast’s $117.5 Million Settlement Was Approved on August 20 — the Judge Cut the Lawyers’ Fee by $7.4 Million, and the Court-Authorized Site Still Says the Court ‘Must Decide’

On Thursday, August 20, 2026, two entries appeared on the docket of Hasson v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, No. 2:23-cv-05039-JMY in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Entry 321, entered at 10:13 a.m. Eastern, is a 45-page Memorandum signed by District Judge John M. Younge. Entry 322, entered four minutes later at 10:17 a.m., is a one-page Order. The clerk’s docket text for the order reads, as entered and with the clerk’s spelling:

“ORDER THAT, FOR REASONS SET FORTH IN THE ACCOMPYING MEMORANDUM, PLANTIFF’S MOTIONS FOR FINAL APPROVAL OF CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT (DOC. NO. 315) AND MOTION FOR ATTORNEYS’ FEES, COSTS, EXPESNES, AND SERVICE AWARDS (DOC. NO. 286) ARE GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART. THE COURT GRANTS ATTORNEY’S FEES OF $31,725,000.00 (27% OF THE SETTLEMENT FUND). SIGNED BY DISTRICT JUDGE JOHN M. YOUNGE ON 8/20/2026.”

That is the whole of the order as the docket describes it. We have not read the 45-page memorandum — it sits behind PACER’s paywall and no free copy had surfaced by publication — so everything below about the reasons is what the order text itself establishes, not a summary of the opinion. What the order text establishes is enough: the settlement is approved, and the fee award is a specific number that is smaller than the number requested.

A word on our own coverage. Our August 20 piece said the hearing had been held fifteen days earlier “and the court still hasn’t ruled.” When that article went out, the ruling was already on the docket — it had been entered that morning. The third-party docket mirrors we rely on (PacerMonitor and CourtListener, both of which republish PACER data) picked it up within hours, after our check. The court-authorized settlement website, which we treat as the authoritative source for claimant-facing facts, had not — and, as you will see, still hasn’t.

Class counsel asked for fees of up to one-third of the fund — $39,170,000 — plus expenses and a $5,000 service award to each class representative. That request is in the long-form notice and the fee motion (docket no. 286) on the official site. The court awarded $31,725,000, which it describes as 27%. The difference is $7,445,000.

Where does that money go? Not back to Comcast. The settlement agreement (filed as docket no. 275-2) makes the $117,500,000 payment “non-reversionary” and says flatly: “No funds shall revert to Comcast,” with the sole exception of a termination that does not happen when the deal is approved. Fees are paid out of the Settlement Fund. So money the court declines to award as fees is money that stays in the common fund from which class members are paid.

For scale, our arithmetic: before notice and administration costs (the fund covers up to $7.3 million of those; Comcast pays any excess), the pot left after fees rises from roughly $78.3 million at the requested one-third to roughly $85.8 million at 27% — about 9.5% more for the class. That does not transform the realistic no-documentation payment, which the official FAQ estimates at about $50 subject to pro-rata adjustment; it nudges it. And it is worth saying out loud that the one-line order also says “denied in part” without telling us what else, beyond the fee percentage, was trimmed — service awards, expenses, or something in the approval terms. The memorandum knows. The docket text does not.

We checked comcastbreachsettlement.com at 07:08 UTC on August 22 — a little under 45 hours after the order was entered. The homepage still carries the bullet “The Court in charge of this case still must decide whether to approve the Settlement.” The Important Dates sidebar still shows the August 5, 2026 Final Approval Hearing as the next event. The Documents page lists nine files — the motion for preliminary approval, the preliminary approval order, the joint motion to modify it and the order granting that, the fee motion, the settlement agreement, the benefits plan, the long-form notice and the claim form — and no final approval order.

This is normal and it is not a contradiction. Administrator sites are updated by the administrator, on the administrator’s schedule, after counsel hands over the order; the docket is updated by the court the minute the judge signs. Aggregator sites that reported approval on August 20 or 21 are, this time, correct — their source is the docket, not the Kroll site. If you are the kind of reader who only trusts the court-authorized website (a good habit), the order will appear there; until it does, nothing about your claim changes and nothing is required of you.

The claim deadline is unchanged: Monday, September 14, 2026, online or postmarked. Final approval does not shorten, extend or close the claims window — the window was set by the preliminary approval order as modified, and the site still shows it.

Payment is governed by the agreement’s Effective Date, and the agreement is specific. Section 6.1 makes the Effective Date the first business day after all of a list of conditions have occurred, the last two of which are that the court enters the Final Approval Order and Judgment — done August 20 — and that the order “has become final because (i) the time for appeal, petition, rehearing, or other review has expired; or (ii) if any appeal, petition, or request for rehearing or other review has been filed, the Final Approval Order and Judgment is affirmed without material change, or the appeal is dismissed.”

In a federal civil case the time to appeal is generally 30 days from entry of judgment. If nobody appeals, that clock runs out in the second half of September. Whether anybody appeals is the open variable: between May 26 and July 10 the docket logged sixteen separate entries labeled “Objections” (nos. 288, 290, 292–294, 296–297, 301–302, 307–313), and any objector whose objection was overruled may appeal. One appeal is enough to push the Effective Date out by months, sometimes more than a year, which is why the court-authorized FAQ has always said payments come “after the Settlement becomes final” rather than naming a date.

Two things the agreement does date: attorneys’ fees and service awards are paid from the fund “within fourteen (14) days after the Effective Date” (sections 17.1 and 18.1). Class members’ payments are processed under the Consumer Settlement Benefits Plan after claims validation, and no date is posted. Our tracker’s estimate stands: late 2026 is the earliest imaginable if no one appeals, and 2027 is the realistic window.

If you were notified of the October 2023 Comcast breach and have not filed: file. The only official site is comcastbreachsettlement.com; the administrator is Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, P.O. Box 5324, New York, NY 10150-5324, (833) 319-2401. The no-documentation alternative payment is estimated at about $50 subject to pro-rata adjustment; documented losses and lost time are reimbursable up to $10,000 combined; three years of monitoring are automatic.

If you already filed: do nothing. Approval does not require a second form, and no legitimate administrator will email or call asking you to “confirm” a payment with a fee, a gift card or a bank login. Expect the “approved — claim your check now” scam wave to start precisely because of news like this.

If you objected and are thinking about appealing: that decision is yours and your lawyer’s. Know that it is the single act that can delay 30-plus million class members’ payments, and that the agreement was written with exactly that possibility in mind.