The $20 Million VSL#3 Settlement Pays $20 a Box. Without a Receipt or a Notice ID, That Is One Box per Household — and the Same Court Barred the Same-Formula Claim Back in 2019.

The court-authorised website is VSL3Lawsuit.com, run by Angeion Group. The case behind it is older than the class period. When Judge Theodore D. Chuang ruled on the motion to dismiss on December 28, 2020, he opened with the history: “This case is the latest in a long-running intellectual property dispute between former business partners Claudio De Simone and VSL as to who has rightful ownership of a proprietary probiotic formulation (‘the De Simone Formulation’) used in a product sold for many years under the name ‘VSL#3,’ a trademark owned by VSL.” That earlier dispute went to a jury, “which, in November 2018, returned a verdict in favor of De Simone and his new business venture, ExeGi Pharma, LLC.” On June 20, 2019 the same court entered a permanent injunction against Leadiant and Alfasigma, the companies that marketed VSL#3, barring them from stating in promotional materials aimed at U.S. consumers that the Italian-made VSL#3 “continues to contain the De Simone Formulation” and from “citing to or referring to any clinical studies performed on the De Simone Formulation or earlier versions of VSL#3 as relevant or applicable to Italian VSL#3.” The class period in this settlement ends on June 19, 2019 — the day before that injunction.

What the buyers allege, in the court's summary of the amended complaint, is a switch in 2016: “At some point in 2016, Defendants ran out of their existing supply of VSL#3 containing the De Simone Formulation and thus began selling the new VSL#3, a probiotic produced in Italy with a different formulation, under the name ‘VSL#3,’ while claiming in their packaging materials and marketing activities that it still contained the De Simone Formulation.” The complaint quotes a May 2016 letter from Leadiant to health care providers promising “the same quality product, containing the same genus and species of bacteria, in the same proportions you have come to expect,” a May 24, 2016 press release calling the new product “supported by more than 170 studies,” and an August 2016 Alfasigma release saying it “maintain[ed] the original proprietary mix of eight strains of live bacteria.” Those are allegations. The defendants dispute them, and the settlement contains no admission.

The procedural road was long. The class action was filed on July 23, 2019. The 2020 ruling dismissed part of the case and let the rest proceed. On January 28, 2025, Judge Griggsby denied the defendants' motion to exclude the plaintiffs' experts and certified a nationwide class of “all persons who purchased VSL#3 in the United States from June 1, 2016 through June 19, 2019,” plus nine state classes (Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Washington and Wisconsin) with their own representatives. The nine named plaintiffs are David Starr, Bernadette Mavrikos, Edmund Quiambao, James Tettenhorst, Jeremy Hansen, Krista Karo, Arlene Reed-Cossairt, Peter Stavros and Heather Farkas. A consent motion for preliminary approval followed on March 31, 2026; the preliminary approval order came on July 8, 2026, and notices went out under an Angeion plan that combines direct mail and email to buyers found in retailer records with a media campaign the court described as “intended to reach at least 70% of likely Settlement Class Members.”

The rule is $20 per unit, and the notice defines the unit: “A unit is a bottle or box of VSL#3; multiple bottles in a multipack each count as a unit.” The three claim options on the form differ only in how many units they let you count.

Option 1 — a Notice ID. “If you received a notice with Notice credentials, that means that Class Counsel has obtained records of sales of VSL#3 from Defendants and certain retailers, which counts as proof of purchase.” The preliminary approval order says those records identify “more than 200,000 Settlement Class Members,” and the settlement agreement requires the administrator to prepopulate the online form with the units in those records. If you also have receipts showing more, you can submit them and claim the greater number.

Option 2 — receipts. Any proof of purchase gets you a floor of three units. The agreement is explicit: “any Claimant who provides Proof of Purchase for any number of Units will receive a minimum Approved Claim Amount of $60.” Above three, each documented unit adds $20, “up to a maximum of forty (40) units in total” — that is, $800 for forty or more documented units, before any pro rata adjustment. Proof means a receipt or similar document, or the retailer records themselves; the administrator has discretion to accept other evidence.

Option 3 — nothing but an oath. “Class members who do not have proof of purchase will be limited to submitting a claim for one (1) unit purchased per household.” That is $20, on a certification that you bought at least one unit in the class period; the agreement adds that “A maximum of one (1) Claim Form without Proof of Purchase may be submitted for each Household.”

All three are subject to the same adjustment. If claims are few, “the amounts paid for valid claims will be increased pro rata up to the amount of money available to pay claims, although the amount paid per unit will not be more than three times the amounts set forth in this notice.” So the notice's ceiling on a no-proof claim is $60 and on a forty-unit claim $2,400; the agreement itself phrases the increase as the greater of exhausting the fund or three times, a wrinkle the court-approved notice does not carry. If claims are many, “the amounts paid for valid claims will be reduced pro rata.” The online form offers PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, a virtual prepaid card or a cheque; the paper form's header says it pays by cheque only, though the same form still prints an electronic payment selection. Cheques are valid for 180 days. The release covers claims about the purchase, marketing and formulation of VSL#3 arising from conduct up to the July 8, 2026 preliminary approval order — wider than the class period — and “For the avoidance of doubt, the Released Claims do not include Legal Claims for personal injury.”

The fund is $20,000,000, paid into an interest-bearing escrow, and the court's order calls it a “non-reversionary common fund” — nothing goes back to the defendants. Out of it come notice and administration costs, attorneys' fees and expenses, and service awards. Class counsel “will seek up to one-third of the settlement amount (i.e., up to $6,666,666.67) for compensation for their attorneys' fees, plus reasonable expenses,” and “up to $10,000 for each Class Representative” — nine of them, so up to $90,000. The fee application is due on the docket “no later than September 21, 2026” and will be posted on the settlement site, a month before the objection deadline.

Our arithmetic, not the court's: $20,000,000 less $6,666,667 in fees and $90,000 in service awards leaves about $13.24 million before expenses and administration. At $20 a unit, that is enough to pay roughly 660,000 units at face value. If approved claims come in below about a third of that — around 220,000 units — the three-times ceiling applies and every unit pays $60. Where the actual number lands depends on how many of the 200,000-plus buyers with Notice credentials file, and how many units their records show; none of that is public yet.

Money that is still unclaimed after the first distribution — cheques not cashed within 180 days, for instance — goes first to a second round for claimants who cashed their first payment, “to the extent the cost of such redistribution is considered economical by the Class Administrator and Class Counsel.” Whatever is left after that goes to the proposed cy pres recipients, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation and the Digestive Health Foundation — Northwestern Memorial Foundation, subject to the court's approval.

October 20, 2026 is one date for three actions. Claims must be submitted online or postmarked by then. An exclusion request is a signed letter by U.S. mail — a sample form is on the site — to VSL#3 Class Action, c/o Settlement Administrator, 1650 Arch Street, Suite 2210, Philadelphia, PA 19103, stating that you want to be excluded from Starr v. VSL Pharmaceuticals, Inc. An objection is filed with the court at 6500 Cherrywood Lane, Greenbelt, MD 20770, with a copy to class counsel (Patrick J. Vallely, Shapiro Haber & Urmy LLP, One Boston Place, Suite 2600, Boston, MA 02108), and must carry the case name and number, your contact details and signature, the specific grounds, whether it applies to you alone or to the class, any lawyer's details, whether you intend to appear, and — if you mean to present evidence at the hearing — a description of that evidence with copies of the exhibits.

January 6, 2027 at 2:30 p.m. is the fairness hearing before Judge Griggsby in Greenbelt. The notice warns that the date “may be moved to a different date or time without further notice” and that the site will carry any change. Between the two dates, the administrator works through the forms: denied claims are notified within 20 days after the deadline, with 30 days to cure a missing item, and the validity of all claims is to be determined within 165 days of the July 8 order — by about December 20, 2026.

Payment follows the Effective Date, which the agreement defines as final approval plus judgment, and then either the expiry of the time to appeal with no appeal taken or the end of any appeal. Within 14 days after that the administrator calculates the per-unit amount; “All Claim Payments shall be made by the Settlement Administrator within 60 days after the Effective Date, unless otherwise ordered by the Court.” If nobody appeals, that points to spring 2027. If someone does, the date is open, and the notice says so: “there may be other reasons that the distribution of settlement benefits could be delayed.” The administrator answers at 1-844-942-4216; class counsel — Jeremy W. Schulman and Jeffrey S. Gavenman of Hughes Hubbard & Reed, and Edward F. Haber, Michelle H. Blauner, Ian J. McLoughlin and Patrick J. Vallely of Shapiro Haber & Urmy — at 1-800-392-5747 or vsl3lawsuit@hugheshubbard.com. Our Angeion Group page explains what this administrator's notices and payment emails look like; nobody legitimate will ask for a fee to release a settlement payment.