What happened: the Samsung biometric data campaign
In 2022, Paula Wallrich and thousands of other consumers filed individual arbitration demands against Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. with the American Arbitration Association. The claims alleged that Samsung's devices unlawfully collected and stored biometric data — such as fingerprint and facial recognition data used to unlock phones — in violation of Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), one of the strictest biometric privacy statutes in the country and a frequent basis for mass arbitration campaigns against consumer tech companies.
The campaign ultimately encompassed 35,651 individual demands, each attaching a copy of the arbitration clause from Samsung's terms and conditions and alleging that the claimant had purchased or used a Samsung device. None of the demands were personally signed by the claimants, and none attached documentation — a receipt, an order confirmation, a device serial number — showing an actual relationship between the claimant and a specific Samsung product.
| Petitioner | Paula Wallrich, on behalf of 35,651 individual claimants |
| Respondents | Samsung Electronics America, Inc. & Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. |
| Legal basis | Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) |
| Claims filed | 35,651 individual AAA arbitration demands (2022) |
| AAA fee assessed to Samsung | $4,125,000 (refused) |
| District court | N.D. Illinois, No. 1:22-cv-05506 (Hon. Harry D. Leinenweber) |
| Appeal | Seventh Circuit, No. 23-2842 — decided July 1, 2024 |
| Citation | 106 F.4th 609 (7th Cir. 2024) |
| Outcome | Reversed, 3-0, in Samsung's favor — case closed |
The $4.125 million AAA fee dispute
Under AAA consumer arbitration rules, both parties to a mass filing typically owe a share of the administrative filing fees. For 35,651 simultaneous demands, the AAA billed Samsung $4,125,000 as its portion. Samsung refused to pay — arguing the claims were unverified and that it was under no obligation to fund arbitrations it disputed were validly brought against it in the first place.
The AAA then gave the claimants the option to advance Samsung's share themselves so the arbitrations could proceed. They declined. With neither side paying, the AAA terminated the proceedings for non-payment — the same mechanism that, in other campaigns, has been used to pressure companies into settling rather than absorb the fee exposure. Here, it produced the opposite result: rather than settle, the claimants went to federal court seeking to force Samsung to pay and arbitrate anyway.
The Seventh Circuit's ruling
The district court initially sided with the claimants, ordering Samsung to both arbitrate the claims and pay the AAA's fees. Samsung appealed, and on July 1, 2024, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit reversed on two independent grounds.
First, the panel held the claimants failed to meet their evidentiary burden of proving an arbitration agreement existed between each of them and Samsung. The court noted claimants could have submitted purchase receipts, order or confirmation numbers, or sworn declarations — and submitted none of it. The panel also rejected a request to remand the case so claimants could supplement the record, reasoning that the proceeding was functionally at the summary-judgment stage and, in the court's words, "does not allow second chances."
Second, and independently sufficient to reverse on its own, the panel held that even if an agreement had been proven, the district court exceeded its authority by ordering Samsung to pay the AAA's fees. Because the arbitration agreement incorporated the AAA's own rules, the panel found the parties had delegated fee disputes to the AAA's discretion — and once the AAA exercised that discretion by terminating the proceedings, a court had no power to override it.
The ruling joined similar holdings from the Fifth and Ninth Circuits limiting judicial authority to compel fee payment in arbitration, and it drew a wave of amicus support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Consumer Technology Association, the National Retail Federation, the American Bankers Association, and CTIA — all arguing the district court's approach would let plaintiffs' firms manufacture settlement leverage through volume alone, without ever proving an underlying claim.
Current case status
As of 2026, Wallrich v. Samsung is closed. The Seventh Circuit's decision was not remanded for further proceedings, and there is no active docket activity suggesting the case will reopen. For the 35,651 people who filed a demand, the practical outcome is straightforward: the arbitration path they pursued ended without a hearing, a settlement, or a payout, and the appellate court explicitly declined to give them another opportunity to fix the evidentiary gaps in their filings.
The decision has taken on a life beyond the case itself. Legal commentary — including a 2025 Harvard Law Review analysis — has criticized the ruling as potentially incentivizing arbitration providers to compete for corporate clients by offering more defendant-friendly fee procedures. Separately, in 2025 the Second Circuit cited Wallrich's reasoning in reaching a similar result on a different set of facts, signaling the decision's influence is spreading beyond the Seventh Circuit.
Wallrich is the case that changed how I talk to plaintiffs' firms about intake design. Before Wallrich, the standard was names and basic contact information attached to a copy of the terms of service. After Wallrich, that's not enough — you need documentation. A receipt. An order confirmation. A declaration tied to specific facts. The claimants here had a legitimate statute behind them — Illinois's BIPA is one of the strongest privacy laws in the country — but the campaign was built on volume instead of verification, and the Seventh Circuit made every unverified claimant in that filing worthless in a single ruling. That's the risk of scaling intake before you scale documentation.
What this means for plaintiffs' attorneys
Wallrich is now the single most-cited defense precedent in mass arbitration, and it has reshaped how serious campaigns get built from intake forward:
Documentation is the campaign, not an afterthought. A claimant's self-certification that they own or used a defendant's product is no longer sufficient. Receipts, account records, serial numbers, or specific sworn declarations are now the baseline for any campaign expected to survive a Wallrich-style challenge.
Fee-delegation language matters before you file. Because the ruling turned partly on the arbitration agreement's incorporation of AAA rules, understanding exactly how a defendant's specific arbitration clause allocates fee disputes — before mass-filing against it — is now essential diligence, not boilerplate.
Courts will not give claimants a second chance to fix the record. The panel's refusal to remand for additional evidence means firms cannot treat the initial filing as a rough draft. Whatever proof exists needs to be attached at the outset.
The claimant pool quality now determines campaign survival, not just campaign size. Wallrich and Sega both show the same failure mode: an intake process optimized purely for volume, with no verification layer, creates a claimant pool that can be dismantled by a defendant with the resources to challenge it — whether through an evidentiary motion, as in Wallrich, or a direct counter-suit, as in Sega.