The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it will review Google Inc.’s $8.5 million settlement of a class action in which $5.3 million of the funds went to third parties and none to members of the class.
The justices will hear arguments next fall in the case Frank v. Gaos, a so-called “cy pres-only” settlement in which Google settled claims that the company illegally shared the search queries of its users. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in August affirmed the district court’s approval of the settlement and the trial judge’s finding that the settlement fund was not distributable to a class of an estimated 129 million Google users.
