Feel Free Kratom Settlement Claimants Report a Second Check of $44.44 in September 2026 — Money From Uncashed First-Round Checks, After the Court Ordered 680,192 of 736,353 Claims Rejected as Invalid. There Is No New Claim Form.

If you had an approved claim in the Feel Free settlement and a second check arrived in September 2026, it is most likely the settlement’s second distribution. Open Class Actions reported on September 28, 2026 that approved claimants “reported receiving second payments of $44.44 in September 2026,” and added that it “has not confirmed the $44.44 figure against an official number.” Neither have we: the amount does not appear on the official settlement website or in any court document we could read. What the court record does confirm is that a second round exists. In a text order of August 24, 2026, Judge Chhabria wrote that, based on the declaration filed with the post-distribution accounting, settlement funds “have not been ‘fully distributed to Settlement Class Members’ and a second pro rata distribution is still in progress.”

Under the final approval order, the second round is paid from money left in uncashed first-round checks. Paragraph 28 of the final approval order reads: “Any remaining funds from uncashed settlement checks shall be distributed as follows: first, to Settlement Class Members through a second pro rata distribution; second, any remaining funds thereafter shall be distributed to the cy pres recipient, Western Center of Law and Poverty, but only after the Court has reviewed and approved the Post-Distribution Accounting. No funds shall revert to Defendants.” (The class notice spells the charity Western Center on Law and Poverty.) Because the split is pro rata by the number of bottles on each approved claim, a claim for fewer bottles would normally get less than a claim for more, so $44.44 is one reported amount, not a flat payment. As of September 30, 2026, the official site, FeelFreeClassAction.com, still leads with the news that the court granted final approval and carries no announcement of the second round.

The class, as the court certified it: “All persons in the United States who purchased the product ‘Feel Free’ anytime from March 28, 2019, through and including March 5, 2025.” That covers the liquid tonic containing kratom — “Feel Free tonic” and “Feel Free Classic tonic” — and not Feel Free capsules or tonics without kratom. The settling defendants were Botanic Tonics, LLC and Hydra623 Holdings, LLC; the case combined Torres v. Botanic Tonics, LLC, filed in the Northern District of California, with C.C. v. Botanic Tonics from the Central District of California. The companies deny wrongdoing, and the court made no finding either way.

Class members could claim up to ten bottles without proof of purchase and more with receipts. The settlement agreement describes each approved share as “a pro rata share of any amounts paid into the Common Fund on a per-bottle basis, net of any attorneys’ fees, costs, expenses, or any other claims or administration expenses.” Those deductions are on the record. Judge Chhabria awarded class counsel $2,187,500 in fees — “25% of the total fund,” less than the one-third the settlement allowed counsel to request — plus $35,000 in costs, and ordered $333,375 of the fee held back until he has reviewed the final accounting. Four class representatives were approved for $5,000 each, and the administrator, RG/2 Claims Administration, for up to $500,258. Taking every figure at its maximum, about $6.0 million of the $8.75 million was left for claimants, by our arithmetic.

What that meant per check depends on how many claims were finally paid and how many bottles each listed, and neither number is public. As a rough bracket, again our arithmetic: spread over the 42,562 claims that were never flagged, $6.0 million averages about $141 a claim; spread over 56,161 — those plus every claim that was offered a chance to fix a deficiency — about $107. These are averages across claims of different sizes, not anyone’s payment. The court requires a post-distribution accounting to state when payments were made and how much was paid out. Class counsel filed one on August 19, 2026 (Dkt. 168), with a supporting declaration; that filing is not in the free court archive, and we have not read it, so the date and size of the first round are not confirmed here.

Class counsel told the court that “The immense number of claims in this case is unusual.” RG/2 received 736,353 claim forms and flagged 693,791 as potentially invalid. Class counsel’s supplemental brief of September 18, 2025 explains where most came from: 601,142 were “flagged as having been submitted in bulk as a part of an automated online process and not by real class members,” and “More than half of these claims—363,726—came from 10 batches.” The flags overlapped: 211,528 claims named at least one store on Botanic Tonics’ list of retailers that never carried the product, most of them Walmart or Amazon; other flags covered spam-linked email domains, signatures that did not look hand-drawn and altered receipts. Judge Chhabria’s final approval order told RG/2 to reject 680,192 claims and to send notices with a chance to cure, and 30 days to answer, to 13,599 claimants. Claims filed through Sparrow, a subscription claim-filing service, got a separate notice. The court also let 40 late claims through the same screening and counted 42,562 claims “with no deficiency flags.” At final approval, 8 people had opted out and none had objected.

The screening was paid for out of the same fund. The notice had estimated administration at “no more than $222,169”; the court approved up to $500,258, “including the extensive work required to identify and screen fraudulent claims.” At least one real claim was caught in the net. In a December 11, 2025 filing, class counsel told the court that one objecting claimant’s rejection was “one of these erroneous flags” and that his claim had been accepted, and that RG/2 had “received and addressed approximately 327 inquiries concerning Rejection or Deficiency Notices.” The deadline to answer a deficiency notice has passed; the settlement site says claimants with questions about the status of a claim can contact the administrator.

If your claim was approved, you do not need to do anything: there is no form for the second round, and it is paid to approved claimants. Anyone who did not file a claim gets nothing from this settlement; the deadline was June 17, 2025. Deposit the check promptly. The settlement agreement gives claimants “ninety (90) calendar days from the date the Settlement Payment is first issued within which to cash the check” and says an uncashed payment “will expire.” That rule was written for the first payment; the documents we read set no separate window for the second, so it is not worth waiting to find out.

The official channels are the settlement website, FeelFreeClassAction.com, and the administrator: Botanic Tonics Litigation, c/o RG/2 Claims Administration LLC, P.O. Box 59479, Philadelphia, PA 19102-9479; toll-free 1-844-951-2340; FeelFreeClassAction@rg2claims.com. The site asks people not to call the court. A message about a Feel Free payment that comes from anywhere else, or that wants a fee, a bank login or a card number before you can be paid, is worth checking against those contacts before you act. What happens next is set by the court: once “all pro rata distributions have been completed” and the last checks have been uncashable for at least 14 days, class counsel must refile the post-distribution accounting. Only after Judge Chhabria reviews it can anything left go to the Western Center on Law and Poverty, and only then is the held-back part of the fee released.

This was a consumer case about how the tonic was sold. The combined suits alleged that Botanic Tonics sold Feel Free “containing kratom without disclosing the harmful impacts from consuming the beverage”; the companies deny it. One point in the release matters for anyone who says the product harmed them. The notice states: “you are not releasing any claims for personal injury.” A class payment for bottles does not settle a claim for addiction or injury. The settlement also required a label: Feel Free products containing kratom, and the brand’s social-media advertising, must carry the warning “This product contains leaf kratom which can become habit-forming and cause serious adverse health effects. Consider avoiding this product if you have a history of substance abuse.”

Separately, on September 23, 2026, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes sued Botanic Tonics in Maricopa County Superior Court under the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act, alleging that it promoted the kratom shots as energy drinks, obscured their kratom content and failed “to adequately disclose the risks of addiction and withdrawal from using the product.” Those are allegations in a new case, separate from the class settlement and its payments. The Attorney General’s office says it will set up a forum for consumers to share their experiences. For the wider picture — individual wrongful-death and addiction suits and federal action on concentrated 7-OH products — see our kratom lawsuit overview. If you are dealing with dependence or withdrawal, a doctor is the right first call; this settlement does not pay for treatment.