Every Write-Up Says the Peco Foods Settlement Pays “Up to $6,550.” The Approval Motion Itself Estimates $100. Claims Close November 9.
Ryan, et al., v. Peco Foods Inc., No. 63-CV-2025-900067, Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, before Judge Corey G. Seale. A $950,000 non-reversionary fund for 46,442 people — the 48,170 in circulation is the 2024 notification figure. The headline figure adds three numbers that cannot all be collected, and the largest of them is a residual: the plaintiffs' own motion calls it a “residual cash payment of up to $550, but estimated to be $100.00.” What is genuinely good here: three years of three-bureau credit monitoring, and three years of binding security commitments that no aggregator mentions at all.
By Settlement Insight Data Desk ·
Where “up to $6,550” comes from, and why it will not happen
The number is built by addition: $1,000 for ordinary out-of-pocket losses, plus $5,000 for extraordinary losses, plus $550 for the residual cash payment. Three different benefits, stacked.
The residual is not a promise. It is what is left in the fund after documented claims, fees and costs are paid, divided among everyone who claimed it — and the plaintiffs' own approval motion puts a number on it: a “residual cash payment of up to $550, but estimated to be $100.00,” and elsewhere “Residual Cash Payment, which is anticipated to be $100.00.”
For someone with no documented loss — which is most people in most breaches — the realistic expectation is therefore about $100 plus three years of credit monitoring. That is a decent outcome. It is not $6,550, and nobody should feel misled twice: once by the headline and once by the payment.
The class size is also off in the coverage. The approval motion states plainly: “the Settlement Class contains 46,442 individuals.” The 48,170 in circulation is the number Peco reported in 2024, and it does appear in the federal complaint; 46,442 is the figure the settlement runs on, and the difference is plausibly de-duplication. We read the motion by OCR: the Alabama filings use embedded fonts that copy out as gibberish, and the settlement agreement itself is a pure scan with no text layer at all.
The benefit structure, read carefully
| Benefit | Amount | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary out-of-pocket losses | up to $1,000 | Attestation plus documentation |
| Extraordinary losses | up to $5,000 in total | Attestation under penalty of perjury plus reasonable documentation; losses from December 4, 2023 onward |
| Attested time | 10 hours × $40 = $400 | Only inside the $5,000 extraordinary cap, and only alongside documented extraordinary losses — “Reimbursement for Attested Time is included in the total of up to $5,000.00 per person” |
| Residual cash payment | up to $550, estimated at $100 | No documentation |
| Credit monitoring | 3 years, all three bureaus | Only if you tick the box on the claim form |
Read that third row twice. In many settlements a time payment is a standalone route for people with no receipts. Here it is not: it lives inside the extraordinary-loss cap and needs documented extraordinary losses to attach to. Someone with no documented loss cannot claim the $400.
The fund is a single pot and a real one — $950,000, non-reversionary, with attorneys' fees of up to 33.33 % ($316,666.67) plus up to $30,000 in costs and $2,500 service awards per class representative — up to $22,500 for the nine of them — all coming out of it. There is one contradiction we will name rather than resolve: the preliminary approval order says “All Notice and Administration Costs shall be paid by Defendant,” while the notice and the approval motion both say administration comes out of the fund. Two documents against one, and the arithmetic favours the two — but we cannot tell you which controls.
The unreported benefit: Peco committed to three years of binding data security improvements. No aggregator mentions it, and for people still working there — more than 7,500 by Peco’s own account — it is arguably worth more than $100.
The deadlines, and who this is actually about
- September 28, 2026 — the fee and service-award motion is filed and published. If you want to see what class counsel is asking for before deciding whether to object, that is the date
- October 12, 2026 — opt-out and objection
- November 9, 2026 — claim deadline, online or postmarked
- December 14, 2026, 11:00 a.m. CT — final approval hearing at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse, 714 Greensboro Avenue, second floor; remote attendance possible
Peco Foods is a fourth-generation family-owned poultry processor founded in 1937, headquartered in Tuscaloosa, with plants in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi and, by its own account, more than 7,500 employees. The people affected mostly work or worked at the same company that is paying, which is why the class is measured in tens of thousands rather than millions. But the class itself is not limited to employees: it is defined as everyone who was sent the notice of data breach Peco mailed on or around July 24, 2024. If that letter reached you, you are in it, whether or not you ever worked there.
Like the Serviceaide case, this one started federal and finished state: a consolidated complaint was filed in the Northern District of Alabama in October 2024, voluntarily dismissed, and refiled in Tuscaloosa County; the first amended complaint there is dated September 5, 2025, and the original state filing date is not in the papers we could read. Preliminary approval followed on July 12, 2026.
The Data Behind This Story
- Case
- Ryan, et al., v. Peco Foods Inc., No. 63-CV-2025-900067
- Court
- Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
- Judge
- Corey G. Seale, Circuit Judge
- Class size
- 46,442 (approval motion). The widely quoted 48,170 is the 2024 notification figure
- Fund
- $950,000, non-reversionary — fees, costs, service awards and monitoring all come out of it
- Ordinary losses
- Up to $1,000 with documentation
- Extraordinary losses
- Up to $5,000 total, for losses from December 4, 2023 onward
- Attested time
- 10 hours × $40 = $400 — but only inside the $5,000 cap, alongside documented extraordinary losses
- Residual payment
- Up to $550 — the approval motion estimates $100
- Credit monitoring
- 3 years, all three bureaus, if you tick the box
- Security commitments
- 3 years of binding data-security improvements — mentioned by no aggregator
- Fee motion published
- September 28, 2026
- Opt-out / objection
- October 12, 2026
- CLAIM DEADLINE
- November 9, 2026 — online or postmarked
- Final approval hearing
- December 14, 2026, 11:00 a.m. CT, Tuscaloosa County Courthouse
- Administrator
- Eisner Advisory Group LLC — 1-855-557-9411
- Unresolved in the papers
- The preliminary approval order says the defendant pays administration costs; the notice and the approval motion say they come out of the fund
- Source: Long Form Notice, Ryan, et al., v. Peco Foods Inc., No. 63-CV-2025-900067, PDF read September 4, 2026 from the official settlement site — the caption and court, the nine named plaintiffs (Question 1), the benefit structure and the statement that reimbursement for attested time is included in the $5,000 extraordinary-loss total, the administrator and its address (Question 10), class counsel (Question 18), the fee motion date of September 28, 2026, the October 12, 2026 exclusion and objection deadlines and the November 9, 2026 claim deadline in the summary of legal rights, and the December 14, 2026 hearing (Question 17).
- Source: Order Granting Plaintiffs' Unopposed Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement, signed “DONE this 12th day of July, 2026” by Circuit Judge Corey G. Seale, and the accompanying approval motion — both read by OCR on September 4, 2026, because their embedded fonts copy out as gibberish; the settlement agreement itself is a pure scan with no text layer. Source of the statement that “the Settlement Class contains 46,442 individuals,” of the residual cash payment described as “up to $550, but estimated to be $100.00” and “anticipated to be $100.00,” of the procedural history showing the federal consolidated complaint of October 18, 2024, its voluntary dismissal and the September 5, 2025 refiling in Tuscaloosa County, and of the provision at paragraph 6 that notice and administration costs shall be paid by the defendant — which the notice and the motion contradict.
- Source: Settlement Agreement § 2.9 as summarised in the settlement documents — the three-year data security commitments.
- Source: Harrison, Carson, Hughes, Hargrave and Feyjes v. Peco Foods, Inc., No. 7:24-cv-01028 (N.D. Ala.), complaint stamped filed July 30, 2024 — the earlier federal case and the defendant's corporate details.
- Source: Maryland Attorney General breach notification filing for Peco Foods, Inc. and the company's own site pecofoods.com, read September 4, 2026 — the Tuscaloosa headquarters at 1101 Greensboro Avenue, the 1937 founding, the description as a fourth-generation family-owned poultry processor with more than 7,500 team members, and plants in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. The company's own ranking claim has changed over time (seventh largest on the current site, eighth largest in the 2024 complaint), so we give it with its date or not at all.
Journalists: these figures are free to cite with attribution to Settlement Insight. Custom data pulls: press@settlementinsight.com.