More than 12,000 individuals may be eligible to get a piece of $2.5 million in settlement claims from UnitedHealthcare as part of a lawsuit settlement. Here’s how to see if you’re one of them.
“This case has been litigated extensively,” according to a settlement agreement cited by USA Today. It alleges that the insurance company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by making unauthorized telemarketing calls.
According to Terrell Marshall Law Group, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs, the complaint was filed in January 2019 and it alleges that UnitedHealthcare called non-customers without their prior consent and did not properly remove people from call lists after they opted out.
“Plaintiff Frantz Samson stated that he was not a customer of UnitedHealthcare and did not consent to receive calls, and that numerous efforts to be removed from the call list were ignored,” the law group said last February. “UnitedHealthcare sought permission to appeal the district court’s certification decision, but the Ninth Circuit denied United’s request.”
Two classes are covered by the case, it added. The first is a “Wrong Number” class consisting of people who received automated phone calls from UnitedHealthcare even though they were not members. A “Do-Not-Call” class is the second, consisting of people who were marked as “do not call” in UnitedHealthcare’s records but still received automated calls.
“On October 13, 2023, the Court concluded that Plaintiff provided sufficient evidence to certify these two classes,” said a press release from Shub Johns and Holbrook, another law firm working on the case.
To be eligible for the settlement, individuals would have received one or more prerecorded phone calls between Jan. 9, 2015 and Jan. 9, 2019 from UnitedHealthcare's Medicare and retirement non-licensed retention team, community and state national retention team, or Medicare and retirement collections team and were not a UnitedHealthcare member or third party authorized to receive such calls, USA Today said. Those who are eligible should have received a notice via email or in the mail.
These notices included login codes to claim settlement payments online at this website. Claims must be submitted by April 15, which is also the deadline to opt out of the settlement. Even if eligible, individuals will not receive payments if they do not submit a claim form. A final approval hearing is scheduled for June 20.
USA Today noted that the settlement agreement comes on the heels of a “record-breaking data breach,” that possibly impacted around 190 million customers last February. It also follows the much-publicized assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly by Luigi Mangione a 26-year-old who wrote a manifesto criticizing the insurance industry.