The 'Equinox' Breach Settlement Paying About $100 Is Not the Gym — It's an Albany Mental-Health Nonprofit, and Claims Close October 23

This is the rare settlement where the first thing worth publishing is who it is not about. The official court-approved notice identifies the defendant as Equinox, Inc., described in coverage of the case as a mental-health services nonprofit based in Albany, New York. The litigation is filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Albany County. Nothing in the notice concerns Equinox Holdings, the luxury fitness chain, and membership at a gym does not make anyone a class member here.

The practical test is simple and it is the one the settlement itself uses: the class is all living individuals residing in the United States who were sent a notice by Equinox about this incident. If a letter arrived, this is yours. If you are here because of a gym membership and no letter came, it is not.

The incident occurred on or about April 29, 2024. The categories of information the official notice says may have been affected are unusually broad, and they are the reason this breach deserves more attention than its modest fund suggests: names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, health insurance information, medical treatment or diagnosis information, medication-related information, financial information, provider names and MRN/patient IDs.

Diagnosis and medication data sits in a different risk class from a leaked email address. It does not expire, it cannot be reissued the way a card number can, and for a mental-health provider's clients the sensitivity is the point rather than a side effect. That combination — identifiers plus clinical detail — is what makes this worth claiming even at a small dollar figure. For how these funds are typically structured, see our data breach settlement calculator.

The benefits run on the standard three-track structure. Class members may claim up to $5,000 for documented out-of-pocket losses traceable to the breach, which requires proof. Alternatively there is an estimated pro rata cash payment of approximately $100.00, which the notice expressly says is an estimate and will move up or down with the volume of valid claims. Separately, claimants may elect three years of one-bureau credit monitoring including dark web monitoring, identity theft insurance up to $1,000,000 and managed identity recovery services.

Three deadlines, and they are not the same day — which is where people lose benefits. Claims are due October 23, 2026. Exclusion and objection requests are due a month earlier, September 23, 2026. The final approval hearing is November 12, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Filing a claim and opting out are mutually exclusive: opting out preserves your right to sue on your own and forfeits the payment.

The settlement resolves two consolidated actions: McHugh v. Equinox, Inc. (Index No. 911677-24) and Carter v. Equinox, Inc. (Index No. 901198-25), both in Albany County. Some aggregator write-ups list the McHugh index number with its digits transposed as “911677-42”; the figure above is the one in the administrator's own notice, which is the controlling document.

The court-approved website is EquinoxIncSettlement.com and the toll-free line is 1-844-943-4276. The administrator's mailing address on the notice is 1650 Arch Street, Suite 2210, Philadelphia, PA 19103. Filing is free. A fund reported at $685,000 by ClassAction.org does not appear as a total in the notice itself, so treat that figure as reported rather than official — the per-person estimate of about $100 comes from the notice and is the number to plan around. Nobody legitimate will charge you to submit this claim or ask for online banking credentials to “verify” it.