If you have seen a headline about a $35 million Labcorp settlement and worked out that you have had blood drawn at a Labcorp in the past decade, you may have concluded that you are owed something. That is the wrong test, and it is the reason a lot of these claims will be filed by people who do not qualify and skipped by people who do.
The settlement does not compensate you for being a Labcorp patient. It compensates you for your data having been handed to a third party you have almost certainly never heard of, and for that third party then being breached. Whether that happened to you depends on something quite specific: whether your bill went to collections.
What this settlement actually covers
Between roughly August 2018 and March 2019, a debt collection company called Retrieval-Masters Creditor’s Bureau, trading as the American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA), was breached. AMCA collected unpaid medical bills on behalf of a number of laboratories. Labcorp was one of them.
The breach was large enough to push AMCA into bankruptcy, and it produced a consolidated federal case in New Jersey: In re American Medical Collection Agency, Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, No. 19-md-2904. Labcorp has now agreed to pay $35,000,000 to resolve the claims against it. The court granted preliminary approval on 21 April 2026.
That last point matters and is missing from most coverage: this settlement is not final. The Final Fairness Hearing is listed for 20 August 2026. Until the court signs off and any appeals run out, nothing is paid to anybody.
Being a Labcorp patient is not enough
Here is the class definition as the court has it:
“All individuals for whom Labcorp transmitted personal information to Retrieval-Masters Creditor’s Bureau, Inc., d/b/a American Medical Collection Agency, and such information was contained in the computer systems implicated by the cybersecurity incident at AMCA that occurred between approximately August 2018 and March 2019.”
Read that again with the emphasis in the right place. The trigger is “Labcorp transmitted personal information to… AMCA”. Labcorp did not send everybody’s file to a debt collector. It sent the files of people whose bills were unpaid and had been referred for collection.
So the practical question is not “did I use Labcorp?” It is “did a Labcorp bill of mine end up with a collections agency in 2018 or 2019?” If you paid every Labcorp invoice on time, or your insurer settled it directly and you never saw a balance, you are very probably outside this class no matter how many times you have used the lab.
How to tell whether your bill went to AMCA
Nobody is going to tell you this in a single sentence, so here is what actually gives you an answer:
- The notice itself. The most direct evidence is that you received a notice about this settlement, by post or email, with a Class Member identification number on it. The class list came from Labcorp’s own records.
- The 2019 breach letter. AMCA and the labs sent breach notifications in mid-2019. If you kept a letter from that period mentioning AMCA or Retrieval-Masters, that is a strong signal.
- Your own memory of a collections contact. Letters or calls in 2018 or 2019 chasing an unpaid lab bill — particularly one that referenced a company name you did not recognise rather than Labcorp itself.
- Old bank or card statements. A payment made to a collections company rather than to Labcorp directly.
- If none of the above: ring the administrator. That is what the phone number is for, and it is free.
Do not treat “I do not remember” as a no. A modest unpaid balance that went to collections seven or eight years ago is exactly the sort of thing people forget, and it is precisely the population this settlement covers.
If you never got the notice, or cannot find your Class Member ID
This is the situation that stops most eligible people from filing, and it is worth being precise about what is and is not known.
The mailed and emailed notices carried a Class Member identification number, and the official materials refer to that number in the context of filing an objection. What the official settlement website does not say anywhere is that you are barred from submitting a claim without it. A number of aggregator sites state confidently that no ID is needed. That may well be right, but it is not something the administrator has published, so it is not something to rely on.
The safe course is therefore procedural rather than clever: telephone Kroll Settlement Administration on (833) 447-6786 and ask them to look you up and reissue or confirm your details. Do that with time to spare, not on 2 September. The one outcome you want to avoid is spending three weeks hunting for a letter and then discovering the deadline has gone.
The two payments: you elect one, not both
This is where several write-ups of settlements like this one go wrong, and where a misunderstanding costs real money. There are two cash routes and they are alternatives.
| Route | Amount | Proof required |
|---|---|---|
| Alternative Cash Payment | Estimated $50 | None |
| Out-of-Pocket Losses | Up to $5,000 | Documents plus an attestation |
The official wording is unambiguous: the Alternative Cash Payment is available “in lieu of seeking Out-of-Pocket Losses”. In lieu of means instead of. You choose a lane.
Two further things that are routinely dropped from coverage:
- Neither number is guaranteed. The settlement states that both benefit types are “subject to pro rata increases or decreases dependent on the number of claims filed”. The $50 is an estimate of what is left of the fund divided among valid claimants — it can be more, and it can be less.
- Lost time is not a separate payment. Time spent sorting out fraud is reimbursed at $25 per hour for up to 10 hours, a maximum of $250 — but that sits inside the $5,000 out-of-pocket cap, not on top of it, and it belongs to the documented route.
What counts as a documented out-of-pocket loss
If you are going down the documented route, the standard is higher than people expect. The settlement requires documentation and an attestation, and the losses must be fairly traceable to the security incident. Self-prepared or handwritten notes are not sufficient on their own.
Things that typically qualify: bank or card fraud you had to absorb, fees for credit freezes and unfreezes, notarisation and postage on fraud paperwork, professional fees for identity restoration, and credit monitoring you paid for out of your own pocket from 1 August 2018 onward.
Before you spend an evening assembling this, do the arithmetic honestly. If your documented losses come to $60, the effort of proving them buys you very little over the no-proof route. The documented route earns its keep when the number is materially larger, or when you have a genuine identity-theft file with real receipts.
The two years of medical monitoring
Separately from the cash, class members “may also claim and enroll in up to two (2) years of medical and healthcare information Monitoring Services provided by CyEx through its Medical Shield Pro product”.
This is worth claiming if you want it: medical identity monitoring is a different product from ordinary credit monitoring, and it is the one that matches what was exposed here. It is claimed on the same form, alongside whichever cash route you pick.
One honest caveat. You will see it asserted that taking the monitoring has no effect on your cash payment. The official materials support only that it can be claimed in addition to a cash option; they do not state what it costs the fund or how that interacts with the pro rata calculation. We are not going to tell you it is free money when the settlement papers do not say so.
If you were a Quest, BioReference, Sunrise or CBLPath patient
AMCA collected for several laboratories, and the wider breach is generally put at more than 25 million people. But only the Labcorp portion of the litigation has settled.
The Quest Diagnostics, BioReference, Sunrise Medical Laboratories and CBLPath portions of the same consolidated case are still live. There is no fund, no claim form and nothing to file for those today. If you received an AMCA notice in 2019 through one of those labs, filing on the Labcorp form will not help you — but your position has not been extinguished either. Keep the paperwork.
Dates that still matter
| Opt-out (exclusion) | 27 July 2026 — passed |
| Objection | 27 July 2026 — passed |
| Final Fairness Hearing | 20 August 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET, Newark, New Jersey |
| Claim deadline | 3 September 2026 — online or postmarked |
Because the opt-out date has gone, one option is closed to you: if you are in the class, you are in it, and you will be bound by the release whether or not you file. That is an argument for filing rather than against it. Doing nothing gives up the money and keeps the release.
How to file
- Go to the official site, amcadatabreachsettlement83395.com. Filing is free and there is no legitimate reason to pay anyone to do it for you.
- If you have your notice, use the Class Member identification number on it. If you do not, call (833) 447-6786 before you start.
- Choose one cash route — the estimated $50 with no proof, or documented losses up to $5,000.
- Add the two years of CyEx medical monitoring if you want it.
- Submit online, or post the paper form so that it is postmarked by 3 September 2026.
And a word on scams, because settlements attract them. The administrator is Kroll Settlement Administration. Nobody legitimate will ring you demanding a fee to process your claim, and no genuine claim form asks for your full Social Security number by email.
Settlement fund, class definition, the “in lieu of” wording, the $5,000 cap, the $25-per-hour and 10-hour lost-time limits, the CyEx Medical Shield Pro provision, the exclusions, and all four dates were taken from the official settlement website and its FAQ at amcadatabreachsettlement83395.com on 9 August 2026. The case is In re American Medical Collection Agency, Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, No. 19-md-2904, in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Whether a Class Member identification number is mandatory in order to submit a claim is not stated on the official site either way, and this article does not assert that it is or is not — hence the instruction to telephone the administrator. This page will be updated after the 20 August 2026 hearing and again after the 3 September 2026 deadline.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
I was a Labcorp patient — am I automatically in the class?
No. You are only in the class if Labcorp passed your personal information to AMCA and that information sat in the AMCA systems affected between roughly August 2018 and March 2019. Being billed by Labcorp directly, or being a Labcorp patient at some other time, is not enough on its own.
Can I claim the roughly $50 and the documented-loss payment together?
No. The official notice says the Alternative Cash Payment is available "in lieu of seeking Out-of-Pocket Losses." You elect one route or the other, not both.
Is the roughly $50 a fixed amount?
No, it is an estimate. Both payment routes are expressly subject to pro rata increase or decrease depending on how many valid claims are filed, so the final figure can land above or below $50.
What if I never received a notice, or cannot find my Class Member ID?
Contact the settlement administrator, Kroll, on (833) 447-6786 well before the 3 September 2026 deadline rather than assuming you cannot file. Do not let the deadline pass while you look for the paperwork.
I was a Quest Diagnostics patient and got an AMCA notice in 2019 — can I claim this?
Not through this settlement. Only the Labcorp part of the case has settled. The Quest Diagnostics, BioReference, Sunrise Medical Laboratories and CBLPath parts of the same litigation are still running, so there is nothing to file today, but your claim has not gone away.
When does the money actually arrive?
Not soon. The Final Fairness Hearing is set for 20 August 2026, and nothing is paid until the court grants final approval and any appeals are resolved. Filing before 3 September protects your place; it does not speed up payment.
