Published
September 17, 2026
Investors who bought or otherwise acquired Danaher Corporation common stock between January 27, 2022 and October 23, 2023 may qualify to claim a share of the $172,500,000 Danaher securities class action settlement, estimated at about $1.13 per eligible share before fees. Claims close September 20, 2026, and the final approval hearing was held September 3, 2026.
Current Status
Claims are open. The deadline is September 20, 2026: an online claim form must be completed and electronically signed by 11:59 p.m. EST that day, and a paper form must be postmarked by the same date. The Court held the settlement fairness hearing on September 3, 2026, but no final approval order has been located as of September 17, 2026, and no payment date has been announced. Filing is what preserves a claim — the Court's ruling on final approval and on Lead Counsel's fee application, and the distribution that follows, come afterward.Free settlement alerts
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Status
Claims Open
Claim Deadline
September 20, 2026
Online by 11:59 p.m. EST · mailed forms postmarked by the same date
Estimated Payout
About $1.13 per share
Average before fees and expenses · the actual figure is pro rata by Recognized Loss
Proof Required
Yes
Brokerage records for every Danaher stock transaction from January 26, 2022 through January 19, 2024
What Changed Recently?
The claim window opened after the Court preliminarily approved a $172,500,000 cash settlement of Hawkins v. Danaher Corp., No. 1:23-cv-02055 (AHA), pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before Judge Amir H. Ali. The parties reached the agreement at a day-long mediation session on March 23, 2026, signed a term sheet three days later, and executed the stipulation of settlement on April 20, 2026. The notice to the class is dated June 22, 2026, and the fairness hearing was held on September 3, 2026.The complaint alleges that Danaher and three executives made materially false and misleading statements about the company's business and prospects, particularly the unit that sells equipment used to manufacture biopharmaceutical vaccines and therapeutics, known as the bioprocessing business. Plaintiffs allege that investors bought Danaher stock at prices artificially inflated by those statements and lost money when the share price fell in response to disclosures that allegedly revealed the truth. Defendants deny every allegation of fault, liability, wrongdoing and damages, and state that they entered into the settlement solely to end the burden, expense, distraction and uncertainty of continued litigation. The Court granted in part and denied in part a motion to dismiss on August 4, 2025, and the case never reached trial, so nothing has been decided in either side's favor.
Who Qualifies?
The class covers all persons and entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Danaher Corporation common stock between January 27, 2022 and October 23, 2023, both dates inclusive, and who were damaged as a result. Danaher common stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DHR throughout that window.Five groups are excluded: the defendants and members of their immediate families; anyone who served as a director or officer of Danaher during the class period; any entity in which a defendant has or had a controlling interest; the legal representatives, heirs, successors and assigns of any excluded party; and anyone who submitted a valid, timely request for exclusion. The exclusion deadline was August 13, 2026, so a class member who did not opt out by then is bound by the settlement whether or not they file a claim.
Receiving a notice does not by itself establish class membership or a right to payment. Eligibility turns on what was actually bought and when, which is why the claim form is built around transaction records rather than a membership code.
How Much Can You Get?
The $172,500,000 settlement amount sits in an interest-bearing account. Taxes and tax expenses, the costs of notice and claims administration, any attorneys' fees and litigation expenses the Court awards, and any other Court-approved costs come out first; what remains is the net settlement fund. Lead Counsel has said it will ask for fees of no more than 33⅓% of the settlement amount plus expenses of no more than $850,000, and the class representatives may seek awards totaling no more than $70,000. The Court has not ruled on those requests.Plaintiffs estimate an average distribution of approximately $1.13 per eligible share before any of those deductions. That figure is an estimate and an average, not a per-claimant promise: each authorized claimant receives a pro rata share of the net fund based on their own Recognized Loss measured against the total Recognized Losses of everyone who files an acceptable claim, so an individual recovery can be higher or lower.
Recognized Loss is calculated share by share from the estimated artificial inflation in the stock price on the day of purchase, which the Plan of Allocation steps down across the class period:
- January 27, 2022 through October 19, 2022 — $46.40 per share
- October 20, 2022 through January 23, 2023 — $34.00 per share
- January 24, 2023 through April 24, 2023 — $29.86 per share
- April 25, 2023 through July 24, 2023 — $11.43 per share
- July 25, 2023 through October 23, 2023 — $8.71 per share
- October 24, 2023 onward — $0.00
A share has to have been held through at least one of the five dates on which the price allegedly fell because of a corrective disclosure — October 20, 2022, January 24, 2023, April 25, 2023, July 25, 2023 and October 24, 2023 — to recover anything. Shares bought during the class period and sold before October 20, 2022 therefore have a Recognized Loss of $0. For a share sold between October 20, 2022 and October 23, 2023, the Recognized Loss is the inflation on the purchase date minus the inflation on the sale date.
Two further limits apply after the class period. Shares sold between October 24, 2023 and January 19, 2024 are capped at the purchase price minus the running 90-day average closing price as of the sale date, and shares still held at the close on January 19, 2024 are capped at the purchase price minus $216.62, the full 90-day average. Matching of purchases against sales follows first-in, first-out order. Short sales carry a Recognized Loss of zero, any negative result is set to zero, and no distribution is issued to a claimant whose share of the fund would come to less than $10.00.
What Proof or Notice ID Is Required?
There is no administrator-issued Claim ID, PIN or Notice ID gating this claim form — anyone can start one from the settlement website without a code from a mailed notice. What the form does require is documentation of every transaction it asks about, which is why this page is marked proof required.The schedule of transactions asks for four things: the number of Danaher shares held at the close of trading on January 26, 2022; every purchase or acquisition, including free receipts, from the opening of trading on January 27, 2022 through the close on January 19, 2024; every sale or disposition, including free deliveries, over that same span; and the number of shares held at the close on January 19, 2024. Each entry must be supported by broker confirmation slips, brokerage account statements, an authorized statement from the broker reporting the transactions, or similar records. Danaher and the claims administrator do not independently hold this information. Profitable trades and losing trades both go on the form — omitting transactions can get a claim rejected.
Documents can be uploaded during the online filing process in .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .gif, .png or .pdf format, up to ten files with a maximum of 10 MB each. Filers who cannot upload can print a transmittal letter at the end of the process and send the documents in with it. Claimants keep their originals and send copies. An online claim is not treated as submitted until a confirmation email arrives, and the confirmation page carries the claim number that serves as proof of filing.
What Is the Deadline?
September 20, 2026. An online claim form must be completed and electronically signed by 11:59 p.m. EST on that date — the settlement's own filing instructions specify that time zone. A paper proof of claim must be postmarked by September 20, 2026.Two earlier deadlines have already passed and cannot be revived: requests for exclusion had to be postmarked by August 13, 2026, and objections and notices of intention to appear at the fairness hearing had to be received by August 20, 2026. Filing a claim is the only step still available to a class member.
How Do You Take Action?
Eligible investors file directly with the court-appointed claims administrator through the official settlement website, Danaher Securities Settlement, at no cost and without hiring a lawyer. The site carries the online claim form, the notice, the stipulation and the court documents.Filing takes three steps. Identify the beneficial owner — the person or entity whose money bought the stock, not the brokerage listed as record owner — along with a taxpayer identification number and contact details, and note that joint owners all have to be identified and sign. Enter the holdings, purchases and sales described above in chronological order. Then upload the supporting records, certify the form under penalty of perjury, and submit. One claim form goes in per legal entity: an IRA and a personal account are filed separately, while one corporation's several brokerage accounts belong on a single form. Save the confirmation page and the claim number, because the process cannot be reopened to retrieve them.
What Happens Next?
The Court considered the fairness, reasonableness and adequacy of the settlement, the Plan of Allocation and Lead Counsel's fee and expense application at the September 3, 2026 hearing. No order approving the settlement has been located as of the publication date of this page, and how long the Court takes is not something the parties control.If approval is granted, appeals remain possible and can take a year or more to resolve, and every claim form still has to be processed before any money moves. No distribution date has been announced. Once distribution does begin, any balance left in the net settlement fund after at least six months — from tax refunds, uncashed checks or other sources — is redistributed to authorized claimants where that is economically feasible, repeated until it is not; whatever still remains is donated to a non-sectarian nonprofit organization serving the public interest, selected by Lead Counsel.
Sources and Verification
The figures, dates and mechanics on this page come from primary settlement documents: the Notice of Pendency and Proposed Settlement of Class Action dated June 22, 2026, including its Appendix A Plan of Allocation; the proof of claim and release form and the filing instructions published with it; the stipulation of settlement dated April 20, 2026; and the official settlement website maintained by the claims administrator.- Official settlement website — Danaher Securities Settlement
- Notice of Pendency and Proposed Settlement of Class Action, dated June 22, 2026 — read the notice
- Court docket — Hawkins v. Danaher Corp., No. 1:23-cv-02055 (AHA), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
This page is informational and is not legal advice.
Questions
Do Danaher shares bought after October 23, 2023 count toward a claim?
No. Only purchases and acquisitions made during the class period, January 27, 2022 through October 23, 2023, are eligible under the Plan of Allocation. The claim form still asks for later transactions, through the close of trading on January 19, 2024, because the administrator needs them to balance the claim — but they are not used to calculate a Recognized Loss.
Why might a Danaher claim calculate to zero?
Several situations produce a Recognized Loss of $0 under the Plan of Allocation. Shares bought during the class period but sold before October 20, 2022 recover nothing, because they were not held through any of the alleged corrective disclosures. Short sales are assigned a Recognized Loss of zero. Shares acquired by exercising or converting non-publicly-traded securities such as options, warrants, convertible notes or restricted stock units are not eligible, and neither are shares received through a merger or an exchange for another company's securities. Any calculation that comes out negative is set to zero.
What does the 90-day lookback do to a Danaher claim?
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act caps the loss that can be recognized on shares still held after the class period ended. For shares held through the close of trading on January 19, 2024, the Recognized Loss cannot exceed the purchase price minus $216.62, the average closing price for Danaher common stock over the 90-day lookback period. Shares sold inside that window are capped at the purchase price minus the running average as of the sale date, which the notice lists day by day.
What happens if a Recognized Loss works out to less than $10?
The Plan of Allocation does not issue a distribution to any authorized claimant whose pro rata share of the net settlement fund would come to less than $10.00. Money that stays in the fund after the first distribution may be redistributed to remaining claimants once at least six months have passed, repeated until distributing further is no longer economically feasible.
Who signs the claim form when Danaher shares were held through a brokerage?
The beneficial owner signs, not the brokerage that appears as the record owner. A representative acting for a class member — an executor, administrator, guardian or trustee — may sign instead, but must state the capacity they are acting in and furnish evidence of their authority. A separate claim form goes in for each legal entity, while all of one entity's accounts belong on a single form.
Official Settlement Notice
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Settlement Amount
$172,500,000
Case Title
Hawkins v. Danaher Corp.
Case Number
1:23-cv-02055 (AHA)
Court
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Final Approval Hearing
September 3, 2026 at 10:30 AM
Held — no ruling located as of September 17, 2026
Administrator
Verita Global, LLC
Official Website
Danaher Securities Settlement
