Waste Connections Settlement: $1.4 Million for Business Trash Customers Over Rate Hikes and Fuel Surcharges — Claims Due October 22, 2026, and Households Are Shut Out

If your company, church, nonprofit or public agency had its own service agreement with a Waste Connections hauler and paid for trash pickup, you are probably a member of the $1.4 million waste connections settlement, and you have until October 22, 2026 to file a claim. The court-approved notice is blunt about it: “Submitting a Claim Form is the only way to receive a payment.” If you file nothing, you get nothing and still give up your claims. A form filed online counts if it is submitted by that date; a paper form counts if it is postmarked by that date.

If you are a homeowner or renter who pays Waste Connections for curbside pickup, this settlement is not for you. “Residential Customers” are one of nine excluded groups. The deadline to opt out or object is a postmark of October 7, 2026, so by the end of today the only decision left for most business customers is whether to file a claim.

The class Judge Austin certified on June 24, 2026 covers “All persons and entities, including but not limited to corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, non-profit organizations, governmental, quasi-governmental, and public bodies, and other organizations … that arranged for or received solid waste collection services in the United States from any Waste Connections Entity at any time during the Class Period.” “Waste Connections Entity” means any subsidiary or affiliate of Waste Connections, Inc., not only the four companies named as defendants (Waste Connections US, Inc. and its South Carolina, North Carolina and Lone Star units). The notice does not print the Class Period dates. Claim Depot’s summary gives the start as August 13, 2018 in one place and August 13, 2019 in another, both running to the settlement’s effective date; the definition is in the settlement agreement, which we could not open.

The exclusions matter more than the definition. You are out if you are a residential customer; an HOA or served under an HOA contract; served under a city or county franchise without your own individual service agreement; served in a “Rate Regulated Market”; a temporary roll-off (dumpster rental) customer; served through one of the brokers listed in Exhibit F; or your service agreement contains a binding class action waiver. Waste Connections’ own staff and the judge’s staff are excluded too. Exhibit F is posted on the official site.

The $1,400,000 is the whole pot. Class counsel — Price Armstrong, LLC of Birmingham and the Langley Law Firm of Spartanburg — will ask for attorneys’ fees of up to $466,666 (one third of the fund), up to $75,000 in costs, and a service award of up to $35,000 for Pinnacle Waste Services, the plaintiff. If the court grants all of it, that is $576,666, leaving about $823,334 before Epiq’s administration bill, which the notice does not state (our arithmetic). Claim Depot’s summary says the net fund is distributed so that “each approved claimant will receive an equal share.”

So the per-claimant amount depends entirely on how many businesses file. The notice gives no estimate and no count of notices sent. An equal share means a small office with one dumpster and a hospital system with dozens of containers would receive the same check — which is also why every valid claim from a smaller customer counts for more than its share of the overcharges alleged.

Payment comes as a paper check, mailed to “the service address provided on your Claim Form,” after final approval and any appeals. “The check will expire after ninety (90) days.” The notice warns that the payment may be taxable and comes “less applicable withholding and deductions.”

• File online at PinnacleWasteSettlement.com. According to Claim Depot, the online form asks for the Unique ID and PIN printed on the notice your business received.
• Or file on paper: download the claim form from the official site and mail it, postmarked by October 22, 2026, to Pinnacle v. Waste Connections Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 5800, Portland, OR 97228-5800.
• Have ready: the business name, contact details, and the service address where Waste Connections picked up. The form is signed by an authorized representative, under penalty of perjury. No invoices are required, according to Claim Depot and ClassAction.org.
• Several locations? Use the address where you want the check; the notice says the check goes to the service address on the claim form.
• Questions: 1-877-239-3277. The notice says not to contact the court or Waste Connections about the settlement.

The opt-out and objection deadline is October 7, 2026, by postmark. Requests had to be mailed and signed individually; objections had to go to the court, both sets of lawyers and the administrator. The final approval hearing is on December 7, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. ET at the Carroll A. Campbell, Jr. U.S. Courthouse, 250 East North Street, Greenville. No checks go out before the court approves the deal.

Yes, if it matches these details. The court-authorized notice names this case, Pinnacle Waste Services, LLC v. Waste Connections US, Inc., No. 7:21-cv-02600-JDA, points to PinnacleWasteSettlement.com, lists the toll-free number 1-877-239-3277 and the Portland, Oregon P.O. Box 5800. Epiq is the administrator. The form asks for business and service-address information — not for a bank account number, card number or a fee. A message pushing you to pay to collect, or sending you to another web address, is not from the administrator. When in doubt, type the official address yourself instead of clicking a link.

Pinnacle Waste Services, a South Carolina company, sued on August 13, 2021, and filed an amended complaint in August 2022. The complaint alleges two practices under Waste Connections’ standard commercial contract. First, the contract allowed the hauler to pass through increases in its own fuel and material costs, but the lawsuit alleges the “Fuel & Material Surcharge” had nothing to do with those costs and was “a hidden profit device that Waste Connections uses solely to pad its profits at its customers’ expense.” Second, the contract tied price increases to the Consumer Price Index, while the complaint alleges automated increases “often exceeding 50% over the course of a contractual term” that “greatly exceed any actual CPI increase,” quoting the company’s own 2018 annual report that inflation had not materially affected its operations.

These are allegations. Waste Connections and its affiliates “deny all allegations in the Action and any wrongdoing or liability” and settled, the notice says, to avoid the expense and risk of litigation. The court has not decided who was right. The company’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 does not mention the case. Measured against five years of litigation over a national customer base, $1.4 million is small; the release is broad, covering claims about any pricing, fees, surcharges or rate adjustments during the Class Period. The same plaintiff filed a separate case against Republic Services in 2020; it is not part of this settlement.