Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case on Google Privacy Settlement

The Supreme Court will hear an online privacy case in which Google is asking the high court to uphold an $8.5 million settlement directed to charitable and academic organizations instead of alleged victims, the court said Monday (see 1708230003). Google agreed to an $8.5 million class-action settlement in 2013 with 129 million plaintiffs, who claimed the platform violated their privacy by revealing personal search engine data to third parties. A lower court upheld the settlement. Google agreed to a "cy-pres" deal, with $3.2 million earmarked for attorneys' fees and $5.3 million for academic and charitable organizations, who agreed to use the money to increase public awareness, education or internet privacy R&D. A cy-pres designation is used when the individual payments are considered too small to justify direct compensation for plaintiffs. Challenging the settlement in Frank v. Gaos is Competitive Enterprise Institute Litigation Director Ted Frank, who claimed the settlement was enough to fund a claims process or lottery distribution to class members but "improperly favored the third-party charities.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was right to uphold the settlement, Google said, as the cy-pres awards “will benefit a much greater proportion [and quite possibly all] of the class.” Challengers raised issues about Google’s business relationships with most of the cy pres recipients, which include Stanford University, Harvard University and the World Privacy Forum.