The value of the 10 highest class-action settlements in 2025 exceeded $70 billion for the first time ever. In fact, the total was nearer to $80 billion across all areas of litigation, according to law firm Duane Morris.
For the fourth straight year, total settlements eclipsed the $40 billion mark.
Gerald L. Maatman, co-author of the Duane Morris Class Action Review and chair of the firm’s Class Action Defense Group, said the “implications are staggering.”
“To put it into perspective, that amount is larger than the annual budgets of multiple U.S. states and eclipses the GDP of more than half the world’s nations,” he said. “At the same time, the gravitational pull of these massive outcomes is attracting elite talent to the plaintiff’s bar and providing massive incentive for plaintiffs’ lawyers to increase their filings and the sophistication of the strategies they employ.”
Boards, investors, and insurers must proactively plan for class-action litigation, added Maatman, who has been reviewing class-action litigation every year since 2003.
Continued high settlements in the privacy class actions are drawing the attention of plaintiffs’ bar, who are now targeting session replay technology, website chatbots and now website pixels.
“The plaintiff’s bar continues to rely on a consistent recipe: pair modern, ubiquitous technologies with decades-old statutory schemes that impose statutory damages per violation. The result is outsized exposure for routine business practices,” said Duane Morris. In addition, data-privacy class actions in 2025 totaled over 1,800—more than 25% growth over 2024 and more than 200% growth since 2022.
According to the near 750-page review of more than 1,761 decisions in the past year, judges continue to certify class-action litigation at a high rate—68% of motions granted in 2025. Plaintiffs filed more than 13,000 class-action lawsuits in federal courts alone, which is more than 36 new class-action filings every day.
The extensive report shows the amount of class-actions filed is a “substantial” increase over 2024 and indicates that these types of lawsuit aren’t outliers, but “a constant presence.”
“With the traditional arbitration defense being tested and eroded, widening circuit splits driving forum shopping, and the continued rise of Private Attorneys General Act claims, there are many threats looming to class action defense,” said Duane Morris partner Jennifer A. Riley, co-author of the review and vice chair of the firm’s Class Action Defense Group.
Topics Lawsuits
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