A case involving in-cab video company Lytx and the closely-watched Illinois state law on biometric surveillance is coming to an end with a judge’s recent approval of the settlement reached by the two sides several months ago.
The case had three named plaintiffs and a broader class of drivers, with carrier Maverick Transportation and Lytx as defendants.
The settlement of $4.25 million brings an end to the litigation–which never made it to a trial–that began with a state lawsuit filed by driver Joshua Lewis in November 2021 against Maverick, which employed him, and Lytx. Later cases were ultimately all combined into the one now-settled lawsuit that made its way into the federal court system. The settlement is in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.
At issue was Lewis’ complaint that, according to the initial lawsuit, the Lytex system would “scan the driver’s face geometry and harnesses those biometric data points by feeding them into sophisticated algorithms that identify the driver’s actions, in what amounts to constant AI surveillance.” Maverick used Lytx’ system.
Illinois is ground zero for biometrics law
And it was Illinois that ended up as the venue for the lawsuit because its law on biometrics–the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)–is considered one of the stricter in the country, and has been a focus for law firms involved in the issue. It was first approved in 2008 and amended in 2024 to make it less onerous against corporations than as previously written.
In an online commentary on why Illinois’ law has taken center stage in the discussion over the legal limits of surveillance and biometrics, law firm King & Spalding said BIPA “has become the leading biometric data privacy law in the country due to its private right of action for injured individuals.”
The settlement agreed to by the two sides was first submitted to the court in January. With the approval last week of Judge Nancy Rosenstengel, it lays out what individual drivers who responded to the solicitation to join the class of plaintiffs will receive.
Out of the final settlement of $4.25 million, one-third will go to the lawyers for the plaintiff, approximately $1.42 million.
Ultimately, the court received responses from 3,599 unique individuals with 2,061 of them from Illinois and 1,538 from out of state.
Each of the Illinois residents will receive approximately $631 and each non-Illinois resident will receive $845, according to a document filed by Lytx and Maverick attorneys in support of the settlement. The difference between the two is because the settlement called for 50% of the payouts to go to Illinois residents with non-residents accounting for the other half.
The three named plaintiffs in the case, including Lewis, will each receive $10,000.
How the payouts compare
In the document, Lytx and Maverick described these amounts as “substantial” compared to other class settlements. The attorneys cited individual payouts in several other instances of BIPA-related litigation for comparison, ranging from a high of $188.59 to a low of $47.
The Lytx/Maverick document said the estimated full pool of potential class members at about 85,000. About 22.5% were contacted. Ultimately, the court received responses from 3,599 unique individuals seeking to become part of the class, with 2,061 of them from Illinois and 1,538 from out of state.
Another transportation-related case over BIPA involving railroad BNSF resulted in a payout of about $1,000 per individual.
The core of the plaintiffs’ argument was that Lytx violated drivers’ rights by not having a “publicly available retention schedule and guidelines for the destruction of biometrics,” and that its communications with drivers about the system were inadequate.
In a statement emailed to FreightWaves, a Lytx spokesman said the company was “pleased to put this settlement behind us. Although we maintain that these lawsuits are not warranted, we’re continuing our focus on delivering category-defining driver safety technology to meet the evolving needs of today’s fleets.”
Lytx, on its website, has made its view clear of the relationship between its system and BIPA.
“Lytx firmly believes that BIPA does not apply to Lytx’s technology and that these lawsuits are not warranted,” the company said in its statement. “As designed, Lytx’s in-vehicle Machine Vision + Artificial Intelligence (“MV+AI”) Alerting System does not collect retina or iris scans, facial geometry, or any type of biometric data, for any purpose whatsoever. Our in-vehicle MV+AI technology detects driving behaviors, not the identity of a driver.”
Was a precedent set?
With a settlement, the company’s defense of its product and its compliance with BIPA didn’t get a chance to be heard in court.
However, in a blog post on the website of Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, one of the law firms that represented the plaintiffs and the class, the firm noted that an earlier attempt by Lytx and Maverick to have the case dismissed was rejected.
While the law firm conceded that “no precedent has been set on whether Lytx’s system constitutes a BIPA violation,” it also saw the rejection of the defendants’ move to dismiss as having significance.
“In denying dismissal, the court reinforced a key feature of BIPA: the law’s protections apply regardless of whether biometric data is used for actual identification,” the law firm said. “That interpretation reaffirmed BIPA’s emphasis on the type (their italics) of data collected, not its immediate identifiability, and continues to drive litigation risk for companies deploying biometric and AI technologies in Illinois.”
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