A court in Chicago preliminarily approved a class action settlement in the lawsuit Nieto v. Shoreline Marine Company, Case No. 21 CH 5747 (Circuit Court of Cook County, IL) (the “Lawsuit”). The Court has approved this Notice to inform you of your rights in the settlement. As described in more detail below, you may:

(i) Request a settlement payment and give up certain legal claims you have;

(ii) Exclude yourself from the settlement and not receive a settlement payment and not give up any legal claims;

(iii) Object to the settlement; or

(iv) Do nothing, not receive a settlement payment, and give up certain legal claims you have.

Before any money is paid, the Court will decide whether to grant final approval of the settlement.

This Lawsuit is about whether Defendant Shoreline Marine Company (“Defendant”) violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, 740 ILCS 14/1 et seq. (“BIPA”). Subject to certain statutory exclusions, BIPA prohibits private companies from capturing, purchasing, receiving through trade, obtaining, disclosing, redisclosing, or disseminating, storing, transferring, and/or using an individual’s biometric identifiers and/or biometric information, unless they first provide an individual with certain written disclosures and obtain written consent and make publicly available a written policy regarding their retention and destruction of such identifiers and information.

The Lawsuit alleges that Defendant violated BIPA related to the Plaintiff’s and Class Members’ use of a hand-scanning timekeeping device while they worked for Defendant during any time from November 12, 2016 through April 19, 2023. Specifically, the Lawsuit alleges that Defendant did not obtain the required written consent and did not make publicly available or comply with the required written policy, and that the Defendant received or disclosed information governed by BIPA.

Defendant denies the allegations in the Lawsuit and denies any violation of the law. Specifically, Defendant denies that the hand-scanning system(s) used by the Plaintiff and Class Members collected any biometric identifiers and/or biometric information, and deny that they failed to comply with the requirements set forth in the BIPA statute.

Both sides agreed to the settlement to resolve the Lawsuit to avoid further disputes and the inconvenience and expense attendant to litigation. The Court did not decide whether the Plaintiff is correct that Defendant violated the law or whether Defendant is correct that it did not.

You can learn more about the Lawsuit by contacting the Settlement Administrator or Settlement Class Counsel.