$8.2M Settlement Proposed for Reader’s Digest Class Action Lawsuit

The publisher of Reader’s Digest has agreed to resolve claims of privacy rights violations with a $8.2 million class action settlement.

Plaintiff Shannon Taylor and defendant Trusted Media Brands have reached a settlement in a privacy rights class action lawsuit over how Trusted Media handled its subscribers’ personal information.

Taylor alleges Trusted Media sold off that information in violation of Michigan’s Preservation of Personal Privacy Act.

Taylor’s attorneys submitted the proposed settlement to the court last Thursday with a motion for preliminary approval.

Under terms of the Reader’s Digest privacy settlement, Trusted Media agrees to create a settlement fund worth more than $8.2 million. The fund will be used to pay valid claims submitted by Class Members, on a pro rata basis. Class counsel estimates each payment will be worth around $50.

The fund will also cover an incentive award for Taylor, expenses of administration of the settlement, and an award of attorneys’ fees for class counsel. No leftover amounts will revert to Trusted Media – or to any cy pres recipient, as is sometimes provided in other privacy class action settlements.

Taylor brought this Reader’s Digest class action lawsuit in March 2016. She claims she began receiving an avalanche of junk mail and unwanted telemarketing calls after Trusted Media sold her contact information to data miners.

She claims the information sold included not only subscribers’ full names and home addresses, but also more personal demographic information like their sex and their religious and political affiliation.

Taylor claims this selling of personal information is a clear violation of Michigan’s Preservation of Personal Privacy Act. That law specifically prohibits businesses that sell “books or other written materials” from disclosing the purchaser’s identity to anyone other than the purchaser themselves.

The act allows affected persons to sue for $5,000 in statutory damages.

Taylor says neither she nor any proposed Class Member consented to having Trusted Media sell off their personal information. Trusted Media never asked its customers for that consent, nor did it ever notify them that it would handle their personal information  in such a way, she claims.

In March of this year, after completion of discovery and with Trusted Media’s motion for dismissal still pending, the parties notified the court that they were commencing a mediation to be conducted by U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas.

The current Reader’s Digest settlement was reached within a few weeks after the initial mediation session, with some follow-up assistance from Judge Maas.

The proposed settlement Class would cover “all Persons with a Michigan street address who subscribed to a TMBI Publication to be delivered to a Michigan street address between March 10, 2010 and July 30, 2016.”

Top Class Actions will post updates to this class action settlement as they become available. For the latest updates, keep checking TopClassActions.com or sign up for our free newsletter. You can also receive notifications when this article is updated by using your free Top Class Actions account and clicking the “Follow Article” button at the top of the post.

Taylor is represented by attorneys Joseph L. Marchese, Scott A. Bursor and Philip L. Fraietta of Bursor & Fisher PA.

The Reader’s Digest Privacy Rights Class Action Lawsuit is Shannon Taylor v. Trusted Media Brands Inc., Case No. 7:16-cv-01812, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

UPDATE: November 2017, the Michigan Reader’s Digest subscriber privacy class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim.