A Judge Signed LabCorp’s $35 Million Final Approval on August 20. Three Days Later the Official Claims Site Still Tells 11,825,034 People the Court “Still Has to Decide” — and Claims Close September 3

On August 20, 2026, Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer signed a Final Approval Order and Judgment in In re: American Medical Collection Agency, Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, No. 19-md-2904 (JKS)(MAH), in the District of New Jersey. It is Document 940 on the docket, nine pages, and it relates to what the case calls the Labcorp Track.

The order does everything a final approval order does: it finally certifies the settlement class under Rule 23(a) and (b)(3), confirms class counsel and the class representatives, approves the settlement as “fair, just, reasonable, and adequate” under the Third Circuit’s Girsh v. Jepson factors, dismisses the action against Labcorp “on the merits and with prejudice,” and directs the Clerk to enter judgment “immediately … forthwith.”

We read the court-authorized settlement website, amcadatabreachsettlement.com, on the morning of August 23, 2026 — three days after the order was signed. The Labcorp settlement page still says, verbatim: “The Court in charge of this case still has to decide whether to approve the settlement.” There is no mention of the August 20 order anywhere on the page. The claims deadline it displays is unchanged: Thursday, September 3, 2026, online or postmarked.

This is the second time this week we have found a court-authorized settlement site running behind its own docket — the Comcast site carried pre-ruling language for at least two days after Judge Younge granted final approval on August 20 as well. The practical consequence is the same in both cases: people checking “has this been approved yet?” get an answer that was true in July.

The most consequential new number in the order is in its recitals. Pursuant to the preliminary approval order of April 21, 2026, “a class list was compiled from Defendant’s records. A total of 11,825,034 potential Settlement Class Members were identified.”

When LabCorp disclosed the AMCA breach to the SEC in 2019, the figure it gave was 10,251,784 patients. The class list is 1,573,250 people larger. The order does not explain the difference, and we are not going to guess at one: a class list compiled from a defendant’s records seven years later is a different exercise from a breach notification count, and either number can move for reasons that are administrative rather than substantive.

The certified class is defined as “all individuals for whom Labcorp transmitted personal information to Retrieval-Masters Creditor’s Bureau, Inc. d/b/a American Medical Collection Agency (‘AMCA’), and whose information was contained in the computer systems implicated by the cybersecurity incident at AMCA that occurred between approximately August 2018 and March 2019.” Note that this is broader than “people who got a notice letter” — it turns on whether LabCorp sent your data to AMCA, which most patients would have no way of knowing.

The order also records that three objections were filed. The court found “that the response of Settlement Class Members supports final approval” and that the objectors’ contentions “are without merit and are overruled.”

The order fixes the deductions precisely. Class counsel — Carella, Byrne, Cecchi, Brody & Agnello, P.C.; Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP; and Nussbaum Law Group, P.C. — are “hereby awarded reasonable fees in the amount of $11,900,000.00 and costs in the amount of $2,813,558.90.” The 22 settlement class representatives named in the order are “each hereby awarded a service award in the amount of $5,000.00” — $110,000 in total.

Our arithmetic on those three figures: $14,823,558.90 comes off the top, which is 42.4% of the $35,000,000 fund. The fee alone is exactly 34.0%. That leaves $20,176,441.10 for the class — and that is before settlement administration costs, which this order does not quantify.

Divided across all 11,825,034 class members, $20.18 million is $1.71 each. That is not what claimants will receive, because class members only get paid if they file a claim, and claim rates in large data-breach settlements are typically low single-digit percentages. To make the mechanics visible rather than to predict anything: at a 1% claim rate the same pot is about $170 per claimant, at 3% about $57, at 5% about $34. The settlement’s own structure — up to $5,000 for documented losses, a smaller pro-rata cash payment for everyone else, and two years of monitoring — means the actual split depends on how many people claim which benefit. Nobody can tell you your number today, and any site that does is guessing.

Document 941, signed by the same magistrate judge on the same day, is an order granting preliminary approval to a settlement in what the MDL calls The Other Labs Track. We have seen no coverage of it.

The defendants are Sonic Healthcare U.S.A., Aurora Diagnostics LLC, Clinical Pathology Laboratories, Inc. (“CPL”), and Austin Pathology Associates. They entered into the settlement agreement on April 30, 2026, and will “collectively fund or cause to be funded $6,438,578.20 for a common fund.” The class covers individuals whose information Sonic transmitted to AMCA and was in the systems hit between August 1, 2018 and March 30, 2019, plus those to whom Austin Pathology (or AMCA on its behalf) sent notice of the incident.

The order appoints Kroll Settlement Administration LLC as administrator and Citibank as escrow agent, and sets a full schedule: settlement class data to the administrator by August 31, 2026; notice mailed by October 5, 2026 (the “Notice Date”), by email where known and first-class mail otherwise; the fee application by November 18, 2026; objections and opt-outs due December 3, 2026; the final approval motion by December 8, 2026; and a Final Fairness Hearing on January 7, 2027 at 11:00 a.m. in Courtroom PO3 before Judge Jamel K. Semper at the Martin Luther King Building & U.S. Courthouse, 50 Walnut Street, Newark.

Claim forms are due “no later than ninety (90) days after the Notice Date.” Ninety days from October 5, 2026 is January 3, 2027 — that is our arithmetic from the order’s deadline rule, not a date the order prints. There is nothing to claim yet: no Sonic claim form, no Sonic settlement website, nothing to do until notice goes out in October. If you were a Sonic, Aurora, CPL or Austin Pathology patient in that window, the thing to watch for is an email or letter in early October.

One day after both orders, on August 21, 2026, plaintiffs filed a Motion to Certify Class (Document 942) with a supporting memorandum (Document 943) running to a declaration from James E. Cecchi and 48 exhibits. The docket sets responses due by October 16, 2026.

That is a litigation-class motion, not a settlement motion — the MDL continues against defendants who have not settled. The official site’s own language is careful about this: “To date, the Settling Defendants are: Labcorp,” and “There may be future settlements in this Litigation with other Defendants.” The Sonic order shows exactly what “future settlements” looks like in practice. We are not naming a target for the certification motion, because the docket text we can read for free does not name one.

If you were a LabCorp patient between August 2018 and March 2019, the claims deadline is September 3, 2026 — eleven days from today. The settlement has now been finally approved, so the main uncertainty that might have made someone wait is resolved, even though the site has not said so.

Two things worth knowing. First, final approval is not the end of the money timeline: the order provides that if the settlement “does not become effective according to the terms of the Settlement Agreement,” the judgment is vacated and the agreement is void — the standard structure that makes payment contingent on the judgment becoming final, which ordinarily means the appeal window closing. The order sets no payment date, and we are not estimating one.

Second, the claim itself does not require you to have received a notice letter. The class definition turns on whether LabCorp sent your information to AMCA. If you had LabCorp diagnostic services in that window, the claim form is the place to find out, and the administrator is Kroll at amcadatabreachsettlement.com. There is no fee to file, and no legitimate administrator will ask you to pay to claim.