Published
September 8, 2026
People who received a written notice from Peco Foods Inc. saying their personal information was exposed in the December 2023 data breach may qualify to claim a residual cash payment estimated at up to $550, documented losses of up to $5,000, and three years of credit monitoring from the $950,000 Peco Foods data breach class action settlement. Claims close November 9, 2026, but the deadline to opt out or object falls almost a month earlier, on October 12, 2026.
Current Status
Claims are open. The deadline to submit a Claim Form is November 9, 2026, at 11:59:59 p.m. Central for an online submission, or with a November 9, 2026 postmark by mail. The final approval hearing is set for December 14, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Central at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. No final approval order has been entered, and no payment date has been announced.A second date lands first and is easier to miss. October 12, 2026 is the deadline both to exclude yourself and to object — almost a month before the claim window shuts. Opting out is the only way to keep the right to sue Peco Foods separately over this breach, and that door closes first.
Status
Claims Open
Claim Deadline
November 9, 2026
11:59:59 p.m. Central online, or that postmark by mail · opt out or object almost a month earlier, by October 12, 2026
Estimated Payout
Up to $550, or up to $5,000
The $550 residual cash payment is a pro rata estimate from a $950,000 fund and will likely be less · documented losses pay up to $1,000 ordinary and up to $5,000 extraordinary · three years of triple-bureau credit monitoring on top
Proof Required
Yes — ID to file online
A Settlement Claim ID from the notice is required to open the online form · the paper Claim Form treats it as optional · documentation needed for the loss tiers, but not for the residual cash payment
What Changed Recently?
The claim window opened this fall on a breach that happened nearly three years ago. Peco Foods Inc. is one of the largest poultry processors in the United States, headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and the settlement concerns a data breach that occurred on or around December 4, 2023, in which the complaint alleges an unauthorized third party accessed personal identifiable information belonging to the plaintiffs and the settlement class.Two dates in the record are worth putting side by side. The incident is dated on or around December 4, 2023. The Notice of Data Breach that defines who is in the class went out on or around July 24, 2024 — roughly seven and a half months later. The settlement documents do not explain the gap, and the notice does not publish how many people were sent a letter, so neither figure should be assumed from the fund size.
Nine named plaintiffs brought the case, which is captioned Ryan, et al. v. Peco Foods Inc., Case No. 63-CV-2025-900067, in the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. It settled for a $950,000 common fund before any class was certified for trial.
Peco Foods denies the claims. The notice states that the company denies it did anything wrong and denies that the incident caused any harm to the representative plaintiffs or to the settlement class members whose data may have been accessed, and that no court or other judicial entity has made any judgment, finding or determination that Peco has any liability for these claims or did anything wrong. The court has not decided who is right; both sides agreed to settle to avoid the cost and risk of a trial.
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Who Qualifies?
The settlement class is people who reside in the United States and received written notice from Peco Foods that their personal identifiable information may have been compromised in the breach. The class definition the settlement website publishes ties that to a specific mailing: individual U.S. residents whose information was accessed or acquired in the breach that is the subject of the Notice of Data Breach Peco sent on or around July 24, 2024.Peco's own records decide who that is, so in practice the question is whether a notice letter arrived.
Excluded from the class are the judge presiding over the litigation, that judge's staff and immediate family; Peco's officers, directors, members and shareholders; anyone who timely and validly requests exclusion, along with their successors and assigns; and any person found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be criminally guilty of initiating, causing, aiding or abetting the breach, or who pleads nolo contendere to such a charge.
One wording difference is worth knowing about before it causes a wrong conclusion. The Claim Form's general instructions describe the class as everyone in the United States whose information was compromised in the breach Peco discovered in December 2023, "including all those individuals who received notice of the breach" — a phrasing that reads as broader than the notice's own definition, which is anchored to the July 2024 mailing. The Notice and the settlement website both use the mailing-anchored version, and that is the definition to work from. Anyone who believes they were affected but never received a letter should raise it with the administrator through the settlement website's contact page rather than assume either way.
How Much Can You Get?
Four benefits, and a class member is not limited to one. The Claim Form says so expressly: you may file a claim for each benefit you qualify for.- Residual Cash Payment — estimated at up to $550. Available to every settlement class member who files a valid claim, with no documentation and no loss required. It is a checkbox on the form.
- Ordinary out-of-pocket losses — up to $1,000. Actual, documented, unreimbursed losses incurred on or after December 4, 2023, with an attestation under penalty of perjury and reasonable documentation.
- Extraordinary losses — up to $5,000. Documented, unreimbursed monetary loss from identity theft or fraud not already covered by another category, on the same attestation-plus-documentation terms.
- Credit monitoring — three years, triple bureau. Real-time monitoring at all three bureaus, dark web scanning, public record monitoring, and access to fraud resolution agents.
The $550 is a ceiling and an estimate, not a payment. The notice is explicit about the arithmetic: the Residual Cash Payment is calculated by dividing what remains of the $950,000 fund after credit monitoring, out-of-pocket loss reimbursements, claims administration costs, service awards, and court-approved attorneys' fees and costs are paid, and it may therefore be less than $550. Class counsel intend to ask for up to 33.33% of the fund in fees — up to $316,666.67 — plus reasonable costs of up to $30,000, and service awards of $2,500 for each of the nine class representatives, which is $22,500. If the court awards all of that, roughly $580,000 of the $950,000 remains before administration costs and the cost of credit monitoring come out, and the residual cash is what survives that. The per-person figure then depends on how many valid claims are filed. Treat $550 as the ceiling the documents allow, not the number to expect.
Credit monitoring is paid before cash, and that ordering matters. The notice directs the claims administrator to distribute the Net Settlement Fund first for credit monitoring and then for cash payments, with any pro rata increase or decrease applied on an equal percentage basis. Electing monitoring is not free to the class as a whole — it comes out ahead of the money. The notice also contemplates the edge case: if the value of the credit monitoring alone would exhaust the net fund, the length of the monitoring provided is reduced to bring the cost within it.
Attested time is not a standalone benefit. Up to 10 hours of time spent remedying breach-related issues can be claimed at $40 an hour, which is a high hourly rate by class settlement standards. But the notice ties it to the extraordinary tier: only settlement class members with valid, documented extraordinary losses may also submit a time claim, and the money counts inside the same $5,000 per-person cap rather than being added on top of it. A class member with no documented extraordinary loss cannot claim time at all.
The examples the notice gives of reimbursable ordinary losses are the usual set: credit report and credit monitoring costs, late and overdraft and returned-check and card-replacement fees, late fees on third-party transactions delayed by fraud or a card replacement, unauthorized charges never reimbursed, parking or transportation to deal with fraudulent charges, credit freeze costs, long-distance and per-minute phone charges, usage-based data charges, and postage or gasoline for local travel.
What Proof or Notice ID Is Required?
The identifier and the documents are two separate questions, and the answer differs by route.The identifier. The online claim portal will not open the form without a Settlement Claim ID, which comes from the notice Peco mailed. That single field is the gate on the fastest way to file, which under OCA's standard makes this a proof-required settlement — someone who never received the notice, or who has since thrown it away, cannot simply log in and claim. The paper Claim Form is different: its contact section lists "Claim ID (if known)," so a printed form can be completed and mailed without one. That is a real escape hatch, but it is an envelope rather than a website, and it is not a reason to describe the settlement as no-proof.
The documents. The Residual Cash Payment needs none. It is a checkbox, backed by the sworn attestation at the end of the form that everything provided is true and correct. Credit monitoring is the same: a checkbox, no documentation.
The two loss tiers are the opposite. Both require an attestation under penalty of perjury that the claimed loss is actual and unreimbursed, plus reasonable documentation demonstrating it — the Claim Form asks for a line-by-line table describing each document and its amount. Self-prepared documents may be submitted to clarify or support other documentation, but the Claim Form states plainly that self-prepared documents by themselves are not sufficient to file a valid claim. Attested time is the exception inside the documented route: it needs no receipts, only a description of each action taken and the hours it consumed, plus a checkbox attesting the hours are true and correct.
The claims administrator, Eisner Advisory Group LLC, decides whether and to what extent each claim is valid and may ask for more information. A claimant who does not supply it in a timely manner has the claim treated as invalid and unpaid.
What Is the Deadline?
Three deadlines, on two dates.Claims: November 9, 2026. Online submissions must be completed by 11:59:59 p.m. Central on that date. A mailed Claim Form must carry a postmark no later than November 9, 2026.
Exclusions: October 12, 2026. A request to opt out must be a letter saying you want to be excluded from the settlement in Ryan, et al. v. Peco Foods Inc., Case No. 63-CV-2025-900067, and it must state your full name, address and telephone number, carry your own original signature or that of someone legally authorized to act for you, and state unequivocally that you intend to be excluded. It must be postmarked by October 12, 2026. Someone who opts out receives no benefits and is not bound by the judgment; someone who wants to opt out should not also file a Claim Form.
Objections: October 12, 2026. An objection must be filed with or submitted to the Clerk of the Court by that date and served at the same time on proposed class counsel and Peco's counsel. It has to be written and to include the case caption; the objector's name, address, telephone number and email if any; information identifying the objector as a class member, including proof of membership; a written statement of every ground for the objection with any legal support; the identity of all counsel representing the objector; a statement of whether the objector or their counsel will appear at the hearing; a list of every class action settlement the objector has objected to in the previous five years; and the objector's signature along with that of any authorized attorney or representative.
Objecting and excluding are opposites rather than a pair. You can object only if you stay in the class, and a class member who opts out has no standing to object because the case no longer affects them. The notice resolves the collision directly: someone who submits both a valid objection and a valid exclusion request is treated as having submitted only the exclusion request.
How Do You Take Action?
File online at the official settlement website, Peco Foods Data Settlement.com, using the Settlement Claim ID from your notice. The Claim Form can also be downloaded from the site, printed and mailed to the administrator, and the administrator can send a paper copy on request through the site's contact page.The form itself is short. Section I takes your name and contact information, and requires you to notify the administrator if it changes after you file. Sections II through V are the four benefit checkboxes, with a documentation table under each of the two loss tiers and an hours table under attested time. Section VI is the sworn attestation and signature, which acknowledges that the claim is subject to verification and that the administrator may ask for supplemental information before treating it as complete.
The practical advice is to claim everything you qualify for in one pass. Nothing on the form makes the benefits mutually exclusive, and the Residual Cash Payment in particular is available to every class member who files, whether or not they lost a dollar.
Staying in the class is not free. If the settlement becomes final and you have not opted out, you give up the right to sue Peco Foods and the other released parties over any claim arising out of or relating to the data breach. Doing nothing is the worst outcome available: a class member who ignores the notice is bound by that release, gives up the right to sue, and receives nothing in exchange.
What Happens Next?
The next milestone is the final approval hearing on December 14, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Central at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or by remote or virtual means if the court orders it. The court will consider whether the settlement is fair, reasonable and adequate, will rule on the request for attorneys' fees and costs, and will consider the service awards sought for the class representatives, along with any timely objections.Class counsel's motion for attorneys' fees, costs and service awards is due no later than September 28, 2026, and the notice says it will be posted on the settlement website. That filing is where the actual fee request becomes public, which is the single number that most moves the residual cash payment.
Attending the hearing is optional. Class counsel will present the settlement, a timely written objection is considered whether or not the objector appears, and a class member may attend or send their own lawyer at their own expense. A class member who wants to speak must file an objection that says so, by the October 12, 2026 deadline. The notice cautions that the hearing may be moved to a different date or time without additional notice and directs class members to check the settlement website.
After the hearing, the notice is candid that payment takes time: if the court approves the settlement there may be appeals, resolving those can take more than a year, and processing all the Claim Forms takes time of its own. No payment date has been announced.
Sources and Verification
This page is based on the official settlement website, the court-authorized Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement, the settlement website's FAQ, and the Settlement Claim Form in Ryan, et al. v. Peco Foods Inc., Case No. 63-CV-2025-900067, Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.- Official settlement website — Peco Foods Data Settlement (claim portal, deadlines, court documents)
- Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement (embedded below)
- Peco Foods Settlement Claim Form (embedded below)
- Settlement website FAQs, questions 1 through 24 (embedded below)
Employer breaches of HR files keep producing these cases, because a payroll system holds exactly the Social Security numbers an attacker wants. For a close comparison, see the Central Valley Meat data breach settlement, another food processor whose employee records were exposed. For context on how these cases work, read our explainer on the data breach class action, or browse the current roundup of open data breach settlements and the wider list of open class action settlements.
Questions
Who is eligible for the Peco Foods data breach settlement?
U.S. residents whose personal identifiable information was accessed or acquired in the data breach Peco Foods discovered in December 2023, and who were sent the Notice of Data Breach the company mailed on or around July 24, 2024. Peco's own records decide who that is, so the practical test is whether a notice letter arrived. Excluded are the judge, court staff and their immediate families; Peco's officers, directors, members and shareholders; anyone who validly opts out; and anyone found criminally responsible for the breach.
How much does the Peco Foods settlement pay?
There are four benefits and a class member can claim more than one. The Residual Cash Payment is estimated at up to $550, but it is a pro rata share of whatever is left in the $950,000 fund after every other cost is paid, so the actual figure will very likely be lower. Ordinary out-of-pocket losses pay up to $1,000 with documentation. Extraordinary losses pay up to $5,000 with documentation, and up to 10 hours of time at $40 an hour counts inside that same $5,000 cap. Three years of triple-bureau credit monitoring can be claimed on top.
Do I need a Settlement Claim ID to file a Peco Foods claim?
To file online, yes. The claim portal asks for a Settlement Claim ID before it will open the form, and that number comes from the notice Peco mailed. The paper Claim Form is different: it lists the Claim ID as optional, so it can be mailed in without one. Under OCA's standard that still makes this a proof-required settlement, because someone who never received the notice or has since lost it cannot simply log in and file.
Why is the $550 Peco Foods payment described as an estimate?
Because it is a residual, not a fixed amount. The notice says the Residual Cash Payment is calculated by dividing what remains of the $950,000 fund after credit monitoring, out-of-pocket loss reimbursements, administration costs, service awards, and attorneys' fees and costs are paid, and that it may therefore be less than $550. Class counsel are asking for up to $316,666.67 in fees plus up to $30,000 in costs, and service awards of $2,500 for each of the nine class representatives. The final per-person figure also depends on how many valid claims are filed.
Can I claim the $40-an-hour lost time payment on its own?
No. The notice ties Attested Time to the Extraordinary Losses tier: only settlement class members with valid, documented extraordinary losses may also claim up to 10 hours at $40 an hour, and that money counts inside the same $5,000 cap rather than being added on top of it. A class member with no documented extraordinary loss cannot claim time. Attested Time itself needs no receipts, only a sworn description of what was done and how long it took.
Why do the Peco Foods claim deadline and opt-out deadline differ?
The court set them almost a month apart. Claims are due November 9, 2026 at 11:59:59 p.m. Central for online submissions, or with that postmark by mail. Requests for exclusion and objections are both due October 12, 2026. The earlier date is the one that is easy to miss, because opting out is the only way to keep the right to sue Peco Foods separately over this breach, and that door closes first.
Official Settlement Notice
For more class actions keep scrolling below.
Settlement Amount
$950,000
Common fund — credit monitoring, cash, administration, fees and service awards all come out of it
Case Title
Ryan, et al. v. Peco Foods Inc.
Case Number
63-CV-2025-900067
Court
Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
Final Approval Hearing
December 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM CT
Tuscaloosa County Courthouse · date and time may change without additional notice
Class Counsel
Pittman, Dutton, Hellums, Bradley & Mann, P.C. · Methvin, Terrell, Yancey, Stephens & Miller, P.C. · Morgan & Morgan Complex Litigation Group
Administrator
Eisner Advisory Group LLC
Official Website
Peco Foods Data Settlement.com
