A $175 million settlement is open to Seagate shareholders, and the single detail most likely to surprise an eligible investor is this: if you sold before the close of trading on March 7, 2022, your recognized loss is $0.00 — even though you are in the class and bound by the release. Claims close October 19, 2026.
Status: Claims open | Claim deadline October 19, 2026, 11:59 p.m. PT | Opt out or object by October 27, 2026 | Fund: $175,000,000
What the Case Alleged
Seagate is one of the world’s two largest makers of hard disk drives. The complaint alleged that Seagate, chief executive Dr. William Mosley and chief financial officer Gianluca Romano misled investors by concealing the magnitude of the company’s sales to Huawei — a company on the U.S. government’s restricted-entity list — in alleged violation of U.S. export laws, and that Seagate’s profitability during the class period rested largely on those sales.
The backdrop is a matter of public record. In April 2023 the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced a $300 million civil penalty against Seagate Technology LLC and a Singapore affiliate, resolving allegations that they shipped more than 7.4 million foreign-produced hard drives, worth roughly $1.1 billion, to Huawei entities across 429 transactions between August 2020 and September 2021 without a license, after the Foreign Direct Product Rule had been extended to cover Huawei. It was the largest stand-alone administrative penalty in the agency’s history, payable in quarterly installments of $15 million over five years, with audit obligations and a suspended denial order.
The securities case that produced this settlement is a separate, private lawsuit about what investors were told — not a government enforcement action. None of the securities allegations was tested at trial. All defendants deny them, deny any wrongdoing or violation of law, and deny that their alleged conduct caused the class any harm. No court has found any defendant liable.
How the Deal Came Together
The parties settled in the middle of a contested case, not at the end of one. Seagate’s motion to dismiss the operative complaint was granted in part and denied in part on May 12, 2025; the company answered in June 2025 and discovery followed. Plaintiffs moved for class certification on December 16, 2025, and that motion was still pending when the deal came together.
A first mediation with David M. Murphy of Phillips ADR Enterprises on November 5, 2025 produced nothing. The parties met with the same mediator again on March 21, 2026, again without agreement, but talks continued and led to a $175 million cash deal memorialized in a term sheet executed as of April 20, 2026. The Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement is dated May 29, 2026 and was amended June 29, 2026. A federal court has since authorized notice, which is why the claim window is open now.
Who Qualifies
The Settlement Class covers all persons and entities who purchased or otherwise acquired common stock of Seagate Technology Holdings plc from September 14, 2020 through April 19, 2023, inclusive, and were allegedly damaged as a result. Seagate common stock trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker STX, CUSIP G7997R103 (previously G7945M107).
You are not a Settlement Class Member if:
- you are, or were, an officer or director of Seagate, or an immediate family member of one;
- you are the legal representative, heir or assign of an excluded person;
- you owned Seagate common stock solely through a mutual fund during the class period;
- you sold Seagate common stock during the class period but never purchased or acquired it during that window;
- you are the presiding judge, the judge’s staff, or an immediate family member of either.
Two points decide most remaining questions. Option contracts are not eligible securities here — only common stock — although stock acquired or sold by exercising an option counts, using the exercise date and exercise price. And receiving a notice does not by itself establish eligibility: the parties have no record of your trades, which is why a claim form and documentation are required.
The Money
The settlement creates a $175,000,000 cash fund plus interest. After deduction of court-approved attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses, notice and administration costs, taxes and any other court-approved expense, the remainder — the Net Settlement Fund — is divided among claimants whose forms are accepted.
The notice gives one headline estimate: about $1.03 per eligible share, assuming a claim is submitted for every eligible share, before deductions. Lead Counsel will ask for attorneys’ fees of up to 25% of the fund plus litigation expenses of up to $1.3 million, which together the notice estimates at roughly $0.26 per eligible share if the court awards the full request. Notice and administration costs are estimated at $679,000, and the class representatives may seek reimbursement awards totaling no more than $75,000.
Treat the $1.03 as what it is: an average across a hypothetical in which everyone files, not a per-share entitlement. Your actual payment is a pro rata share of the Net Settlement Fund, set by your Recognized Claim relative to every other claimant’s, so a low claim rate raises individual payouts and a high one lowers them.
Two hard limits also apply. If your overall class-period trading produced a Market Gain rather than a loss, your Recognized Claim is zero. And if your calculated share comes to less than $10.00, no check is issued at all — those dollars are redistributed to claimants above the threshold.
The Trap: Selling Before March 8, 2022 Means a Zero Claim
Being inside the class period is not enough on its own. The Plan of Allocation compensates losses tied to four alleged corrective disclosures, reflected in Seagate’s price moves on March 8, 2022, July 22, 2022, October 26, 2022 and April 20, 2023. To have a compensable loss you generally had to still be holding the shares through at least one of those dates. The plan says so directly: any share purchased during the class period and sold before the close of trading on March 7, 2022 has a Recognized Loss Amount of $0.00.
So an investor who bought in 2021 and sold in January 2022 at a real loss is a class member, is bound by the release, and still recovers nothing here. That is not a drafting error — it reflects the securities-law principle that a recoverable loss has to be caused by the disclosure of the allegedly misrepresented information rather than by ordinary market movement.
For shares that do qualify, the calculation turns on the alleged artificial inflation per share on the day you bought versus the day you sold. Those figures come from the notice’s Table A:
| Purchase or sale date | Alleged artificial inflation per share |
| September 14, 2020 – October 22, 2020 | $1.45 |
| October 23, 2020 – January 21, 2021 | $3.01 |
| January 22, 2021 – April 22, 2021 | $4.82 |
| April 23, 2021 – July 20, 2021 | $13.41 |
| July 21, 2021 – October 21, 2021 | $7.79 |
| October 22, 2021 – March 7, 2022 | $9.55 |
| March 8, 2022 – July 21, 2022 | $4.72 |
| July 22, 2022 – October 25, 2022 | $1.45 |
| October 26, 2022 – April 19, 2023 | $1.00 |
| April 20, 2023 onwards | $0.00 |
For a share bought during the class period and sold between March 8, 2022 and April 19, 2023, the Recognized Loss Amount is the lesser of the drop in alleged inflation between the two dates and the actual price drop you took. For a share still held at the close on July 18, 2023, it is the lesser of the inflation on the purchase date and the purchase price minus $60.30, the mean closing price over the 90-day look-back window. Purchases and sales are matched First In, First Out, with class-period sales applied first against whatever you already held on September 14, 2020.
What Documentation Is Required
Documentation is mandatory for every transaction and holding you report, and missing paperwork is the most common reason a securities claim stalls. Acceptable proof is copies of trade confirmations, brokerage account statements, or an authorized statement from your broker or other financial institution containing the same transactional and holding information. If you no longer have those records, the claim form tells you to obtain copies from your broker.
The reporting window is wider than the class period. You have to state your holdings as of the opening of trading on September 14, 2020; every purchase or acquisition from September 14, 2020 through April 19, 2023; total purchases from April 20 through July 18, 2023; every sale from September 14, 2020 through July 18, 2023; and your holdings at the close on July 18, 2023. Report transactions whether they made or lost money — omitting any of them can get the claim rejected. Do not send original documents, and do not highlight anything on the form or the attachments.
File a separate claim form for each legal entity or separately managed account; an individual should not combine IRA trades with trades held in their own name. The form is signed under penalty of perjury. Institutional filers with large transaction volumes can request the mandatory electronic filing format from the administrator. Whichever route you use, the administrator acknowledges receipt by mail within 60 days — treat that acknowledgment, not the act of submitting, as confirmation your claim is on file.
Dates
- October 19, 2026, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time — claim forms must be postmarked or submitted online. A class member who misses it is barred from any payment but remains bound by the release, unless the court orders otherwise or Plaintiffs’ Counsel exercise their discretion to excuse a late filing.
- October 27, 2026 — exclusion requests must be received, and objections to the settlement, the Plan of Allocation or the fee request must be filed, postmarked or submitted online. You can object and still file a claim; opting out means no payment but preserves the right to sue Seagate separately.
- November 17, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time — Settlement Fairness Hearing before Judge Rita F. Lin, Courtroom 4, 17th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco, with remote access by Zoom. The court can change the date, time or format without another notice being mailed.
Approval alone does not release money. Payments follow only after the approval order becomes final, any appeals are resolved, and the administrator finishes processing claims. The notice asks class members to be patient and says plainly that the claims process takes substantial time. No payment date had been announced as of August 6, 2026.
If money remains six months after the initial distribution, the administrator may redistribute it to claimants who cashed their first checks and would receive at least $10.00, repeating as long as that stays cost-effective. Any final remainder goes to the University of Miami School of Law Investor Rights Clinic. Approval of the settlement is independent of approval of the Plan of Allocation, so the court could modify or reject the allocation formula without unwinding the settlement itself.
How to File
File on the official settlement website, SeagateSecuritiesLitigation.com, administered by Strategic Claims Services under the court’s direction. Filing is free and you do not need a lawyer.
In practice: pull your brokerage records for the full window from September 14, 2020 through July 18, 2023 before you start; list every purchase, acquisition and sale in that window along with your opening and closing holdings; upload the supporting documents; and complete the process through to the confirmation screen. The online filer emails a confirmation with a Form ID within a few minutes — keep it, because you need that Form ID to amend anything later. The site also hosts the downloadable claim form, the opt-out form, the objection form and the settlement documents.
Source and credit: the settlement terms, deadlines and benefit tiers described above are drawn from our sister site’s reporting — OpenClassActions.com: $175M Seagate Securities Settlement — Claim by Oct 19 — which tracks this case against the court-approved notice and the official settlement website and is updated as the court rules.
Frequently Asked Questions
I bought Seagate stock during the class period but sold it in 2021. Do I get anything?
No. Under the proposed Plan of Allocation, any share sold before the close of trading on March 7, 2022 has a Recognized Loss Amount of $0.00. The plan compensates losses tied to four alleged corrective disclosures dated March 8, 2022, July 22, 2022, October 26, 2022 and April 20, 2023, so you generally had to still be holding through at least one of them. You are still a Settlement Class Member and still bound by the release, but you would recover nothing.
Is the $1.03 per share figure what I will actually receive?
No. The notice gives roughly $1.03 per eligible share as an estimate assuming a claim is submitted for every eligible share, before deductions, and estimates court-approved fees and expenses at about $0.26 per eligible share if the full request is granted. Your actual payment is a pro rata share of the Net Settlement Fund set by your Recognized Claim relative to all other claimants, so a low claim rate raises individual payouts and a high one lowers them.
Do Seagate options count?
No. Only Seagate common stock is an eligible security in this settlement. Stock that was acquired or sold by exercising an option does count, using the exercise date and the exercise price, but the option contracts themselves are not eligible.
What documentation do I need?
Copies of trade confirmations, brokerage account statements, or an authorized statement from your broker containing the same transactional and holding information, for every transaction and holding you report. The reporting window runs wider than the class period – from your holdings at the opening of trading on September 14, 2020 through your holdings at the close on July 18, 2023 – and omitting transactions, including profitable ones, can get the claim rejected.
What is the deadline to file a Seagate securities claim?
Claim forms must be postmarked or submitted online no later than 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on October 19, 2026. The separate deadlines to exclude yourself or to object both fall on October 27, 2026. Missing the claim deadline bars payment but does not release you from the settlement release.
When will payments be sent?
No payment date has been announced. Money is distributed only after the court approves the settlement at the November 17, 2026 fairness hearing, the approval order becomes final, any appeals are resolved, and the administrator finishes processing claims. Any calculated share below $10.00 is not paid at all and is redistributed to claimants above that threshold.
Sources
- Official settlement website — SeagateSecuritiesLitigation.com, administered by Strategic Claims Services, including the online claim form, opt-out form and objection form.
- Notice of (I) Pendency of Class Action and Proposed Settlement; (II) Settlement Fairness Hearing; and (III) Motion for Attorneys’ Fees and Litigation Expenses — class definition, the $175,000,000 fund, the $1.03 and $0.26 per-share estimates, deadlines, Plan of Allocation and inflation tables.
- Proof of Claim and Release Form, including the documentation requirements and the September 14, 2020 – July 18, 2023 reporting window.
- Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement dated May 29, 2026, as amended June 29, 2026.
- In re Seagate Technology Holdings plc Securities Litigation, No. 3:23-cv-03431-RFL, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Hon. Rita F. Lin).
- U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security — April 2023 Order and Settlement Agreement imposing a $300 million penalty on Seagate Technology LLC and Seagate Singapore International Headquarters Pte. Ltd., as disclosed by Seagate in its SEC Form 10-K for fiscal 2023.
- OpenClassActions.com — $175M Seagate Securities Settlement — Claim by Oct 19.
Legal Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. OpenClassActions.org is a consumer news site, not a law firm and not the settlement administrator, and is not affiliated with any party to the case described. The allegations are allegations; the defendants deny wrongdoing and no court has decided the merits. Deadlines, benefit amounts and payment timing can change as the court and the administrator act, so confirm current status on the official settlement website. You never need to pay anyone to file a claim or to receive a settlement payment.