Petco, Job Applicants Reach $1.2M Background Check Class Action Settlement

Petco and two job applicants are seeking preliminary approval of a $1.2 million settlement in a lawsuit claiming the company’s background check policies are unlawful.

After an almost two-year legal battle with Petco, the job applicants have reached settlement discussions with Petco for their Petco background check class action lawsuit.

Plaintiffs Jacklyn Feist and Angelica Zimmer state that the proposed deal provides “excellent relief that is well within the range of reasonableness and should be preliminarily approved.”

The Petco class action lawsuit establishes a Class of roughly 37,279 job applicants who believe that they were subjected to Petco’s allegedly unlawful background check policies. If the proposed settlement deal goes through, a $1.2 million settlement fund will be established, from which each Class Member will receive an estimated $20.

Zimmer and Feist’s Petco job application class action lawsuit was filed in a California state court in May 2016. The original claim was that Petco violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by not sufficiently notifying job applicants that the company would conduct background checks of applicants.

Allegedly, the company “buries” the background check notification in the fine print of its online application. Zimmer and Feist argue that this communication violates the FCRA, which requires companies to provide a separate document disclosing the company’s background check policy to individuals who will be subjected to background checks.

The Petco job app background check class action lawsuit was then removed to federal court in June 2016. Petco attempted to have the claims dismissed, saying that Zimmer was given notice of the company’s background check policy, and that in the class action lawsuit, Zimmer even admitted as much.

The company’s representation stated that the “complaint is full of vague, closure allegations without any merit or substance.” Petco went on to argue that “this is precisely the type of complaint that the United States Supreme Court has held fails to satisfy the requisite pleading standards,” pointing to a ruling in a similar case, in which the United State Supreme court ruled that even in the case of a statutory action, a job applicant needed to establish that they had experienced “concrete injury.”

Feist states that she was denied employment at Petco based on the results of her background check, but was not told what the reason for her denial was. Petco fired back by saying that no actions were taken against Feist that would require the company to provide her background check documents to her.

Nonetheless, a federal judge denied Petco’s move to dismiss the Petco application process class action lawsuit, saying that Zimmer and Feist adequately claimed that the company’s policy had willfully violated background check guidelines set out by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

After almost two years of litigation, the Petco job seekers state that this settlement was a positive outcome, given that they believe Petco would have otherwise continued to litigate. The job applicants believe that the settlement provides the best chance of compensation for affected job applicants.

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.

Feist and Zimmer are represented by Lionel Z. Glancy, Marc L. Godino and Mark S. Greenstone of Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP.

The Petco Background Check Class Action Lawsuit is Jacklyn Feist, et al. v. Petco Animal Supplies Inc., et al., Case No. 3:16-cv-01369-H-RNB, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
UPDATE: August 2018, the Petco employee background check class action settlement is now open.Click here to learn more.