Jury Returns $228M Judgment in First US Trial Under Illinois BIPA

The first U.S. jury trial under the 2008 Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act “ended with a bang” when the BNSF Railway was hit with a $228 million judgment Oct. 12 for “recklessly or intentionally” violating the statute, the Perkins Coie law firm said in a Tuesday update. Plaintiff Richard Rogers sued BNSF in April 2019. He was a truck driver who dropped off and picked up loads at BNSF-operated rail yards. He was required to register with an automated gate system and to provide his fingerprint each time he entered the railyard. Rogers didn't give written consent to the collection of his fingerprints, nor was he informed of how long his fingerprint data would be stored, as required under the BIPA, said Perkins Coie. Court records show about three dozen BIPA lawsuits at various stages of disposition. In one of the more recent cases, Amazon and Amazon Web Services said last month they “expressly deny” the allegations in a complaint in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois that they violated the BIPA by using the company’s Rekognition facial-imaging technology to monitor employees in Amazon fulfillment centers (see [Ref:2209220050[).