In a decision with implications for classwide settlement of privacy lawsuits, Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero of the Northern District of California held that claims under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) are personal to individual class members and therefore not assignable to third parties.  The decision, Stark v. Patreon, Inc., No. 22-cv-03131-JCS (N.D. Cal. June 5, 2025), invalidated a mass opt-out effort orchestrated by Lexclaim Recovery Group US LLC (“Lexclaim”), a third-party entity that claimed it was founded to “help people recover a greater share of the money to which they would be entitled in class action cases.”

The class settlement resolved claims that defendant had allegedly disclosed users’ video-viewing activity to a third-party vendor in violation of the VPPA.  After the Court granted preliminary approval of the settlement, Lexclaim solicited assignments from class members, offering them $10 and 20% of any future recovery in exchange for their VPPA claims.  Lexclaim then submitted 927 opt-out forms on behalf of those class members, along with an additional opt-out form in its own name, purporting to act as the owner of those claims.

The Court rejected Lexclaim’s request on several independent grounds, including that the settlement agreement expressly prohibited “group” opt-outs.  Lexclaim had also made “misleading and incomplete statements” to induce class members to opt out and further failed to include all required information in the opt-out forms.  Most notably, the Court held that VPPA claims are not assignable at all, rendering Lexclaim’s purported ownership of the assigned claims legally ineffective.

The Court reasoned that VPPA claims cannot be assigned because they personal in nature and are analogous to the common law torts of intrusion upon seclusion and public disclosure of private facts, which have been understood as non-assignable under both federal and California common law.  This distinguished the VPPA claims at issue from cases cited by Lexclaim, which addressed contract-based claims or claims involving commercial interests, such as the right-of-publicity.  The Court also rejected Lexclaim’s argument that the VPPA’s reference to an “aggrieved person” should be read to support assignment, finding that position was “based on the mistaken premise that statutory claims analogous to tort claims are presumed to be assignable absent explicit language to the contrary.”

Because Lexclaim failed to demonstrate valid assignments, and because any assignment of claims under the VPPA would be invalid as a matter of law, the Court held that Lexclaim lacked standing to opt out of the settlement on behalf of the 927 individuals or in its own name.  The Court’s decision reinforces the personal nature of claims under the VPPA and may deter similar attempts to organize mass opt-outs through claim assignment in future class actions.