Court Gives Preliminary OK to Heartland Breach Consumer Class Action Settlement

A settlement agreement to end some 17 consumer class actions related to a massive payment card data breach by Heartland Payment Systems Inc. was preliminarily approved by a federal court in an order entered May 3 (In re Heartland Payment Sys. Inc. Data Security Breach Litig.).

Under the proposed agreement, which was filed in December 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Princeton, N.J.-based payment card processor Heartland would pay nearly $4.7 million—up to $2.4 million in actual damages, $760,000 in attorney’s fees and expenses, and up to $1.5 million in administration costs—to ...