Settlement administrator
A settlement administrator is the company the court appoints to run a settlement: it sends the notices, takes in claims, checks them, and pays out the money.
Administrators are neutral third parties, not the defendant and not the lawyers. Courts appoint them because handling millions of claims is specialist work. The larger ones in the United States include Kroll, Epiq, JND Legal Administration, Verita, Angeion, and CPT Group.
The administrator is who you deal with in practice. They run the official settlement website, answer the phone number on the notice, and decide whether your claim is valid. If a claim is rejected, they tell you why and there is usually an appeal route.
Knowing the administrator is one of the fastest ways to check that a settlement is real. Their name appears on the official website, and you can look them up independently.
Related terms
Class action settlement
A class action settlement is an agreement that ends a lawsuit brought on behalf of a large group of people, where the defendant pays into a fund that group members can claim from without suing individually.
Proof of purchase
Proof of purchase is documentation showing you bought the product or used the service, usually a receipt, an order confirmation, a bank statement line, or a photograph of the item.