Last month, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved a settlement between Shutterfly Inc. and a class of 950,000 Illinois residents disposing of the class members’ claims for damages and injunctive relief against Shutterfly. The case, originally brought in Illinois state court in 2019 but later removed to federal court, sought to hold Shutterfly liable for employing facial-recognition technology to scan and detect users’ likenesses in photographs uploaded to the website and collect their biometric data, unbeknownst to these users and in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
On September 9, 2021, Judge Raymond W. Mitchell appointed Carey Rodriguez partner David Milian lead counsel for the class and approved the terms of the class wide settlement. The settlement calls for Shutterfly to change its business practices going forward by obtaining permission from its Illinois based customers before applying facial recognition technology to photos uploaded to Shutterfly’s site and by publishing a retention policy detailing how Shutterfly will store and dispose of biometric data. In addition, Shutterfly will pay $6.75 million to the class of affected Illinois residents, $2.4 million of which the court awarded to class counsel for attorney’s fees and litigation expenses.
To read more about the settlement obtained by Carey Rodriguez attorneys on behalf of this class, please click here.
