Judge Holds Off on $80M Conduent Settlement, More Due Nov. 5

Judge Holds Off on $80M Conduent Settlement, More Due Nov. 5

A federal judge in New Jersey did not grant preliminary approval to the proposed $80 million Conduent data breach settlement on October 22, giving plaintiffs until November 5 to file any new or supplemental materials. No claim form, deadline or settlement administrator exists for this case.

Information last verified on October 25, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: No settlement has been approved. There is no claim form, no claim deadline and no court-appointed administrator for this matter as of October 25, 2026. Any new or supplemental materials from plaintiffs are due November 5, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This matter sits in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and turns on federal class action procedure, Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Third Circuit precedent. It is not an interpretation of any single state's breach notification law.

What Happened

Conduent Incorporated runs payment, benefits administration and customer support operations for government agencies and private clients. On April 14, 2025, it disclosed the incident to the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Form 8-K filed under Item 1.05, Material Cybersecurity Incidents. Its later quarterly report describes the event this way: "On January 13, 2025, the Company experienced an operational disruption and learned that a threat actor gained unauthorized access to a limited portion of the Company's environment." Systems came back within days, and in some cases hours.

Conduent said the threat actor "exfiltrated a set of files associated with a limited number of the Company's clients," and that outside data mining experts evaluated those files, "confirming that the data sets contained a significant number of individuals' personal information associated with our clients' end-users." As of that filing, the company said, the exfiltrated data "has not been released on the dark web or otherwise publicly" to its knowledge.

Conduent holds data for client organizations rather than for its own retail customers. In its quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2026, the company said it "notified impacted clients concerning their affected end-users" and then "worked with affected clients to determine next steps as required by federal and state law, including individual and regulatory notifications that began in October 2025 and have been substantially concluded." The same filing says Conduent accrued $25 million in non-recurring expenses in the first quarter of 2025 tied to those notification requirements, and that it has been responding to "several subpoenas, information requests, and investigations from certain governmental agencies and other stakeholders."

The lawsuits followed the letters. The first complaint on this docket was filed on October 27, 2025, and on November 24, 2025 a magistrate judge consolidated the related New Jersey actions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(a) under the caption In re: Conduent Business Services Data Breach Litigation, No. 2:25-cv-16953 (D.N.J.). Per Conduent's quarterly report, the consolidated complaint was filed on March 18, 2026 and amended on June 12, 2026. Conduent "denies plaintiffs' allegations" and says it "believes that it has strong defenses to plaintiffs' claims."

On September 11, 2026, Judge Farbiarz granted a stay and ordered plaintiffs to move for preliminary approval of a settlement "on or before October 13." The motion arrived on October 16, 2026 at docket entry 173, with a settlement agreement and a joint declaration of class counsel attached.

Six days later the court responded, and not with an approval. The October 22, 2026 Opinion and Order is docket entry 175, and the docket text reads: "OPINION AND ORDER regarding 173 Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement; the Plaintiffs shall file any new or supplemental materials on or before 11/5/2026."

One absence is worth stating plainly, because coverage has implied otherwise. The order does not state how many people are in the proposed class, does not identify subclasses and does not state how many people were notified. Class size figures now in circulation do not come from this order, and this desk has not found them in any document it opened.

What the Court Asked For

The order opens with the standard the court applies. "In assessing a motion for preliminary approval of a class action settlement," Judge Farbiarz wrote, "the Court generally requires evidentiary substantiation, with case-specific detail, so that it can make an appropriately informed decision as to each of the Girsh factors and each of Rule 23's requirements." For that proposition the order adds a see cite to one of its own district's 2024 decisions, Hacker v. Electric Last Mile Solutions, Inc.

The court found the plaintiffs' filings did that "in some ways," pointing to Girsh factor 7, the ability of the defendants to withstand a greater judgment, and its bearing on factor 9. "But not in others."

Girsh factor 4, the risk of establishing liability. The court said the materials "offer little for the Court to go on" here. It accepted that class counsel's declaration shows counsel had gathered sufficient information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the plaintiffs' claims, in the court's words that "class counsel have done their job." The problem was the court's separate job. The court "has its own responsibility to independently evaluate such strengths and weaknesses," and the filings "do not enable the Court to do that, because they provide virtually none of the underlying relevant information." It gave an example: "no information is provided as to the key documents and their contents or who the key witnesses are and what they would say."

Girsh factors 8 and 9, the plaintiffs' ideal recovery. This is where the $80 million appears. The court wrote that "class counsel's declaration references a settlement payment of $80 million, which resulted from mediation," then explained why that number alone tells it nothing. The court presumed a familiar mediation method, in which total possible recovery is discounted by the plaintiffs' likelihood of success to arrive at a figure. "But without a sense of the larger baseline of total possible damages and how the baseline was calculated, the Court cannot properly assess the motion in light of the Girsh factors." In other words, $80 million could be a strong result or a weak one, and nothing in the record lets the judge tell which.

Credit monitoring for every class member. One component of the proposed deal, at paragraph 91 of the settlement agreement, would require the Conduent defendants to provide credit monitoring to the whole class. The court said it "cannot assess the adequacy of this as relief for the class," citing Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e)(2)(C), without two specific things: "Information as to the direct monetary relief that was left on the table in order to secure it. And as to how much people generally pay for this service."

Leftover funds. The proposed agreement, at paragraph 141, refers to residual funds going to a cy pres recipient, meaning a charitable or public-interest recipient rather than class members. The court suggested postponing that question: "it is likely wiser to defer questions as to how to dispose of residual funds until later," after initial distributions, when the court can weigh the parties' proposals and the administrative cost of each option.

English-only notices. Last, the court noted that "as to the proposed class notices, the Plaintiffs have provided materials only in English," citing In re Celgene Corp., Inc. Securities Litigation, a December 2025 decision from the same district. The order does not say what languages are required. It flags the gap.

The operative sentence is one line: "The Plaintiffs shall file any new or supplemental materials on or before November 5." The order sets no hearing date and imposes no other deadline.

There Is No Claim Form Yet, and That Matters

Headlines describing an "$80 million Conduent settlement" are already circulating, and people who received a breach notice in late 2025 are going to search for somewhere to file. There is nowhere, and that is not a technicality. The next thing on this calendar is a filing by lawyers.

Here is the sequence a real class settlement follows, and where this one sits in it. Under Rule 23(e), class claims "may be settled, voluntarily dismissed, or compromised only with the court's approval." Before any notice goes to class members, Rule 23(e)(1)(B) requires that "the court must direct notice in a reasonable manner to all class members who would be bound by the proposal if giving notice is justified by the parties' showing that the court will likely be able to" approve the settlement and certify the class. That order directing notice has not issued here. The rule itself governs only the decision to send notice; it does not appoint an administrator and says nothing about claim forms, claims websites or filing deadlines. But in ordinary practice those are what the notice order carries, because a court that is sending notice to a class has to settle who will administer the claims, what the form says and by when it must be returned. Courts differ on the mechanics, some appointing an administrator in that same order and some ratifying the designation in the parties' agreement. Working backward: if the court has not directed notice, nothing downstream of it legitimately exists yet.

So what will a real claims process look like when it arrives? Four checkable markers:

• The administrator is court-appointed, and the appointment is traceable on the public docket. Its identity should not rest on a website's own say-so.
• The notice names the case, the court and the docket number, and those match a docket you can look up yourself.
• It costs nothing. Class counsel in cases like this are paid out of a court-approved fee award rather than billed to class members, so submitting a claim form should never require a fee or a paid filing service.
• Nobody calls to pressure you into filing. The Federal Trade Commission, writing about the Equifax data breach settlement, warned that "people may have already started putting up fake websites meant to look like the official Equifax settlement claims website," and stated flatly: "You'll never have to pay to file a claim for these benefits." It added: "And anyone who calls and tries to get you to file a claim is almost certainly a scammer."

Any site offering a Conduent settlement claim today fails the first test, because there is no order to point to. Do not enter a Social Security number, a date of birth, an account number or a payment method on one, and do not pay a fee. We are not naming or linking such sites, because traffic is what they want.

To be explicit about our own role: Recording Law is a legal information publisher. We are not the court, not class counsel, not a settlement administrator and not a filing venue. We do not accept claims for this or any settlement.

The useful thing to do while the docket moves is the thing that does not depend on a settlement at all. If you received a Conduent-related breach notice, the practical steps that reduce your exposure after a breach start with locking down credit, not with filing paperwork. A security freeze is free at each of the three nationwide credit bureaus and is a stronger control than a fraud alert, as our comparison of a freeze against a fraud alert explains; our guide to placing the freezes covers the mechanics at each bureau.

What the Law Actually Says

Preliminary approval is a real finding, not a formality, and the Conduent order is a clean illustration of why.

Rule 23(e)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure sets the eventual test. If a proposal would bind class members, "the court may approve it only after a hearing and only on finding that it is fair, reasonable, and adequate," considering whether class representatives and counsel adequately represented the class, whether the proposal was negotiated at arm's length, whether "the relief provided for the class is adequate," and whether it "treats class members equitably relative to each other." The adequacy inquiry under subsection (C) takes into account the costs, risks and delay of trial and appeal, the effectiveness of the proposed distribution method, the terms of any fee award and any side agreements. That subsection is the one Judge Farbiarz cited on the credit monitoring component.

In the Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey, courts assess settlement fairness using the factors from Girsh v. Jepson. The Court of Appeals restated them in 2016: "(1) the complexity, expense and likely duration of the litigation; (2) the reaction of the class to the settlement; (3) the stage of the proceedings and the amount of discovery completed; (4) the risks of establishing liability; (5) the risks of establishing damages; (6) the risks of maintaining the class action through the trial; (7) the ability of the defendants to withstand a greater judgment; (8) the range of reasonableness of the settlement fund in light of the best possible recovery; and (9) the range of reasonableness of the settlement fund to a possible recovery in light of all the attendant risks of litigation." Girsh v. Jepson, 521 F.2d 153, 157 (3d Cir. 1975).

Two features of that framework explain the October 22 order. First, as the Court of Appeals has put it, quoting an earlier decision of its own, "the settling parties bear the burden of proving that the Girsh factors weigh in favor of approval of the settlement," which is why a thin record produces a request for more rather than an approval. Second, factors 8 and 9 are both comparisons, measuring the settlement fund against the best possible recovery and against recovery discounted by litigation risk. A comparison needs two numbers. The Conduent filings supplied $80 million and, on the court's reading, not the thing to compare it to.

The practical consequence is the one the case law leaves implicit: until a court issues that order, a settlement agreement binds nobody and gives class members nothing to do. Our running consumer class action settlement tracker lists only claim deadlines that came from one.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The distance between the headline and the docket is the story. "Conduent agrees to $80 million data breach settlement" describes a filing, not an outcome, and in the window between the two the people most reliably making money are the ones buying ads against the phrase "Conduent settlement claim." We watched the same pattern run on the AT&T, 23andMe and National Public Data matters. The tell never changes: a claims affordance that exists before a court order does.

The question the court asked about credit monitoring is the one we would have asked. Monitoring is the cheapest-looking expensive-sounding item in the data breach settlement toolkit, and the distance between the value a settlement implies for it and what it costs to supply is not always put in front of a judge. Asking what cash the class gave up to get it, and what people actually pay for the service, is what converts a line item into a number that can be weighed.

The English-only notice point deserves attention too, and not only for fairness reasons. Conduent's own filings describe a notified population reached through client organizations, and Conduent's client base includes government benefits and healthcare programs. Those are programs whose participants plainly include households that do not read English comfortably. A notice program that cannot reach part of the class lowers the number of people who come forward, and that bears on the credit monitoring component in a way it does not on cash. The order describes paragraph 91 as requiring the Conduent defendants to provide monitoring for every class member, and it does not say how enrollment would work; a benefit that has to be activated person by person costs less to supply the fewer people activate it. On the cash side the mechanism runs the other way or not at all. The order does not state how the $80 million is structured, and the reference to residual funds at paragraph 141 points toward a fund with a leftover, where fewer claims raise each claimant's pro rata share rather than reduce what the defendant pays. Either way a court has reason to police the reach of the notice.

What we would caution against is reading the order as a verdict on the deal. Judge Farbiarz did not say $80 million is too little. He said he cannot tell, on this record, and asked for the material that would let him. Plaintiffs' counsel may well supply it by November 5. A six-day turnaround from motion to order, with specific and answerable requests, reads more like a judge doing the work than a judge signaling an outcome. The honest statement of where this stands is that the court does not yet have what it needs to say whether this settlement is fair, which is exactly why it can order the parties who do hold that material to file it.

For readers the practical takeaway is unglamorous. There is no claim to submit right now, so nothing on that front can be missed this week. Other things still matter: keep the breach notice you received, because class membership in these cases is often defined by who was notified, and freeze your credit, which helps whatever this docket does. Anyone weighing an individual claim of their own rather than class membership should also understand that deadlines for that run on their own clock, independent of this case. Paying a website helps nothing.

What Happens Next

The next event the October 22 order sets is a filing, not a decision. Plaintiffs must submit any new or supplemental materials on or before November 5, 2026. Based on the order, that submission would need to address the risk of establishing liability with case-specific detail, supply a damages baseline and the method behind it, justify the credit monitoring component against the monetary relief forgone, and deal with the notice program's language coverage. The court also signaled it would rather take up the disposal of residual funds after distributions than now.

After that comes the Rule 23(e)(1)(B) decision described above, and if the court ever directs notice, that order is customarily where a claims administrator, a claims website and a filing deadline come from. It is the first moment a claim process exists. The October 22 order says nothing about what the court will do with the November 5 submission and sets no hearing date.

We are not predicting whether preliminary approval will be granted, when, or on what terms. We are tracking the docket and will update this page when the November 5 filing lands and when the court next rules. If and when a court-appointed administrator is named, we will link the official claims site and nothing else.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. Whether you are a member of any proposed class, and what rights you may have, depends on facts specific to you. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Related articles

• Consumer class action settlement tracker
• Are class action settlement payments taxable?
• Identity theft law and your rights

---

Last updated: 2026-10-25. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-25.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a Conduent data breach settlement claim form?

No. As of October 25, 2026, no claim form exists. A proposed settlement was filed on October 16, 2026, and on October 22, 2026 the court did not grant preliminary approval. A claim form only comes into existence after a court order directing notice to the class, and no such order has issued. Any website offering a Conduent settlement claim form right now is not court-authorized.

Was the $80 million Conduent settlement approved?

No. The $80 million figure comes from class counsel's declaration as quoted in the court's October 22, 2026 Opinion and Order. In that order the court said it could not properly assess the settlement on the record before it and directed plaintiffs to file any new or supplemental materials on or before November 5, 2026. The order does not approve the settlement, and it does not use the words denied or rejected.

How much money would I get from the Conduent settlement?

That cannot be answered, and no one can honestly answer it yet. There is no approved settlement, no approved allocation plan and no claims process. The court specifically said it cannot assess whether the proposed payment is reasonable without knowing the baseline of total possible damages. If a settlement in this case is eventually approved, any per-person amount would depend on the allocation plan the court approves and on how many valid claims are filed.

When will I be able to file a claim?

No filing date exists. The next scheduled event is a court filing by plaintiffs' lawyers on or before November 5, 2026. A claim deadline could only be set in a future order directing notice to the class, and the October 22, 2026 order did not set a hearing date or any schedule beyond November 5.

How do I tell whether a class action settlement website is real?

Check four things. The administrator should be court-appointed, with the appointment traceable on the case docket. The notice should state the case name, the court and the docket number, and those should match a docket you can look up. Filing should cost nothing, because class counsel are paid through a court-ordered fee award rather than by claimants. And nobody should be calling you to push you into filing. The Federal Trade Commission has warned that fake sites are built to imitate official settlement claims pages and that you will never have to pay to file a claim.

What is preliminary approval and why is it not automatic?

Preliminary approval is the stage at which a judge decides whether a proposed class settlement is strong enough to send to the class with formal notice. Under Rule 23(e)(1)(B) the court must find that it will likely be able to approve the settlement as fair, reasonable and adequate and to certify the class. The parties asking for approval carry the burden of proof, so an incomplete record produces a request for more information rather than an approval.

How many people are covered by the proposed Conduent class?

The October 22, 2026 Opinion and Order does not state a class size, does not identify subclasses and does not state how many people were notified. Conduent's own securities filings describe the breach and say individual and regulatory notifications began in October 2025 and have been substantially concluded, without giving a number. Class size figures circulating in press coverage do not appear in the court order.

What should I actually do right now if I got a Conduent breach notice?

Treat it as an identity theft exposure rather than a settlement opportunity. Place a free security freeze at each of the three nationwide credit bureaus, review account statements and credit reports for accounts you did not open, and keep the notice letter, because class membership in any eventual settlement is usually defined by reference to who was notified. None of that requires a settlement to exist, and none of it costs money.