Google $425 Million Privacy Verdict Appeal: Rodriguez v. Google Heads to the Ninth Circuit

Google has appealed the $425 million privacy verdict in Rodriguez v. Google LLC: it filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit on 21 September 2026, three and a half weeks after Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California refused to throw out the September 2025 jury award to roughly 98 million users who had switched off the company's Web & App Activity setting. The appeal freezes any payout to the class, puts a judgment of about $440 million (with interest) and a $146.8 million fee award at risk, and sends one of the largest certified consumer privacy classes ever tried to verdict to the court of appeals.

The filing itself is a one-page notice; Google has not yet told the court of appeals which rulings it will attack, and no briefing schedule had been set when the appeal was reported on 23 September. But the record the Ninth Circuit will review is unusually well developed. There is a jury verdict on two claims and a defense verdict on a third, a post-trial order refusing to decertify the class, an order refusing $2.36 billion in disgorgement, and a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law that failed. Each of those rulings is a candidate issue on appeal, and each matters well beyond Google, because the case is the clearest recent example of what consumer aggregate litigation looks like when a company's terms send disputes to court rather than to individual arbitration.

Is Google appealing the $425 million privacy verdict?

Yes. Google LLC filed its notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on 21 September 2026, according to MediaPost's report of 23 September and the plaintiffs' official case website. The notice followed Judge Seeborg's 28 August 2026 order denying Google's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law, the last post-trial motion standing between the verdict and a final, appealable judgment.

The timing is not accidental. Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A), a party in a civil case has 30 days after entry of the judgment or order to file a notice of appeal, and Rule 4(a)(4)(A) restarts that clock when a timely Rule 50(b) or Rule 59 motion is decided. Thirty days from 28 August 2026 ran to 27 September 2026, a Sunday. Google filed on day 24. Under Rule 4(a)(3), any other party then has 14 days from the first notice, or until 5 October 2026, to file its own notice. Whether the plaintiffs will cross-appeal (for example, from the rejection of their state computer-crime claim, the denial of disgorgement or the denial of their own new-trial motion) had not been reported at publication.

Google's position has been consistent since the verdict. Spokesperson José Castañeda said in September 2025 that the decision "misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it," adding that when users turn off personalization, "we honor that choice."

What did the jury decide in Rodriguez v. Google?

The jury found Google liable for violating users' privacy and awarded $425,651,947 in damages to the class. After a trial that began on 19 August 2025 and ran about three weeks, jurors deliberated for roughly ten hours and returned their verdict on 3 September 2025.

The case, filed in July 2020 and led by named plaintiff Anibal Rodriguez, turned on a single setting. Since at least 2016, Google told account holders that turning off "Web & App Activity" (and a related supplemental setting) would stop Google from saving their activity. The plaintiffs proved to the jury's satisfaction that Google nonetheless kept receiving data about what those users did inside third-party Android apps, through two pieces of code app developers embed: the Firebase software development kit (used for app analytics) and the Google Mobile Ads SDK. Apps named in trial coverage included Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Venmo and Meta's platforms.

The jury's findings by claim:

Claim	Verdict	Effect
Invasion of privacy under the California Constitution	Liable	Supports the damages award
Common-law intrusion upon seclusion	Liable	Supports the damages award
California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA)	Not liable	Removed statutory route; plaintiffs' new-trial motion on the "damage or loss" instruction later denied
Damages requested	More than $31 billion	Jury awarded about 1.4% of the ask
Damages awarded	$425,651,947	Compensatory only; no punitive award
Advisory finding on disgorgement	Not warranted	Adopted by Judge Seeborg in January 2026

Google's trial defense was that the data it collected when the setting was off was "pseudonymous": logged against a randomly generated identifier rather than a user's account. The plaintiffs answered that the identifier still let Google recognize a device and its later ad-related behavior, and that the pseudonymization argument missed the point, because the promise was that the data would not be saved at all.

Why did Judge Seeborg refuse to throw out the verdict?

Judge Seeborg held that the plaintiffs had produced enough common evidence for a reasonable jury to find for the whole class, and that weighing that evidence was the jury's job, not the court's. "Google can poke holes in all that evidence, but the decision to credit it or not is the province of the jury," he wrote in the 28 August 2026 order.

The core of Google's post-trial attack was the "highly offensive" element that both California privacy claims require. Google argued that whether collection of pseudonymous app data is highly offensive depends on what the data was and who the user was, so it could not be decided once for 98 million people. The court's answer tied the offensiveness question to the broken promise rather than to the content of any individual's data: "Though the nature of the data certainly mattered, its content cannot be disentangled from the fact that Google collected it after it told users that it would not do so."

That framing matters for the appeal. If the Ninth Circuit accepts that the uniform misrepresentation supplies common proof of offensiveness, the class verdict is on firm ground. If it concludes offensiveness is inherently individual, the problem would reach back to class certification and could unwind the verdict entirely.

The post-trial record: decertification, disgorgement and a $2.36 billion ask

The August order was the second round of post-trial rulings. On 30 January 2026 Judge Seeborg decided three motions together:

• Decertification denied. Google asked the court to decertify the classes of about 98 million users and 174 million devices, arguing there was no class-wide agreement that its conduct was "highly offensive." The court kept the class intact, the same Rule 23 predominance ruling the Ninth Circuit will now review.
• Disgorgement denied. The plaintiffs asked the court to order Google to disgorge a further $2.36 billion in alleged profits. The judge found the plaintiffs had not shown an entitlement to disgorgement and that their estimate of Google's profits was "insufficiently supported," consistent with the jury's advisory verdict.
• Injunction denied. The plaintiffs sought a permanent injunction against the data practices. The court found no showing of "prospective, irreparable harm."

Google therefore goes to the Ninth Circuit having won the two rulings that would have multiplied its exposure fivefold, and having lost the two that preserve the verdict. That asymmetry is why a plaintiffs' cross-appeal is worth watching: the disgorgement and CDAFA rulings are the plaintiffs' only paths to more money.

What issues will Google raise on appeal to the Ninth Circuit?

Google has not filed its opening brief, so the issues are not yet fixed. The post-trial motions it lost, however, show the likely candidates:

1. Class certification and predominance. Whether the "highly offensive" element, and consent, could be resolved with common proof for all class members under Rule 23(b)(3). This is the issue with the most leverage, because a win on it would void the verdict rather than trim it.
2. Sufficiency of the evidence. Whether a reasonable jury could find an intrusion that was highly offensive when the data was stored against pseudonymous identifiers. Judge Seeborg rejected this on the renewed Rule 50(b) motion; the Ninth Circuit reviews that denial de novo but views the evidence in the plaintiffs' favor.
3. Consent and disclosures. Whether Google's privacy policy and settings pages, read as a whole, disclosed the Firebase and Google Mobile Ads collection. The jury found they did not.
4. Damages model. Whether an aggregate, class-wide compensatory award of roughly $4.34 per user was supported by evidence of harm common to the class.

Two procedural points will shape how long the appeal takes to matter to anyone's wallet. First, a judgment creditor can begin enforcing a money judgment unless the debtor obtains a stay, ordinarily by posting a bond or other security under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 62(b); whether Google has done so has not been reported. Second, post-judgment interest runs under 28 U.S.C. § 1961 while the appeal is pending, so the figure owed will keep rising if the verdict is affirmed.

How much did the lawyers get in the Google privacy case?

Judge Seeborg awarded class counsel about $146.8 million on 28 August 2026, one-third of a common fund that had grown to about $440.3 million once interest was added. The award is shared by Boies Schiller Flexner LLP (David Boies was lead trial counsel), Susman Godfrey LLP and Morgan & Morgan, the Florida-founded personal injury firm.

The fee application had asked for 33% of the judgment, reimbursement of $12,422,374.42 in litigation costs and $135,000 in service awards for the three class representatives. A one-third award sits above the 25% benchmark the Ninth Circuit uses as a starting point for percentage-of-the-fund fees, and the court approved the higher figure. Because the fee is a percentage of the fund, it rises or falls with the judgment: if the verdict is reversed, class counsel recover nothing from it, and the appeal therefore puts the Common Fund Doctrine award at risk along with the class's recovery.

When will class members get paid from the Google $425 million verdict?

Not until the appeal is over. The official case website states that payments will not be made until the court rules on Google's post-trial challenges and, if Google appeals, until the appeal is decided. Both conditions are now triggered. No claim form, claims deadline or distribution plan has been approved, and class members are told they will receive notice with instructions if money becomes available.

Class members do not need to do anything now. The class, as certified, covers people who, from 1 July 2016 onward, had Web & App Activity and/or supplemental Web & App Activity turned off and whose activity in a non-Google-branded app on an Android device was still transmitted to Google through the Firebase SDK or the Google Mobile Ads SDK.

How much will each class member receive?

Very little per person, even if the verdict survives. The arithmetic below uses only figures in the court record and is illustrative; the actual distribution plan has not been set and administration costs are not yet known.

Line item	Amount
Jury award (3 September 2025)	$425,651,947
Judgment with interest (as of 2 March 2026)	$440,345,685.40
Less: attorneys' fees awarded (one-third)	about $146,800,000
Less: litigation costs requested	$12,422,374.42
Less: service awards requested	$135,000
Approximate net fund	about $281,000,000
Net per class member (about 98 million)	about $2.87
Net per class device (about 174 million)	about $1.61

Those numbers explain both sides' incentives on appeal. For Google, the aggregate figure is the risk, not the per-person amount. For class members, the value of any individual claim is a few dollars, which is the classic Negative-Value Claim that cannot be litigated one at a time. Aggregation, whether by Class Action or otherwise, is the only way such a claim gets priced at all.

Why was this a class action and not arbitration?

Because Google's consumer terms do not require it. Google's general Terms of Service provide that California law governs and that disputes "will be resolved exclusively in the federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California." The general terms contain no Class Action Waiver and no Arbitration Clause for ordinary account holders. Google does use a separate arbitration agreement, administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its consumer rules, for purchases of devices and related subscriptions through the Google Store, but the Web & App Activity claims concerned account settings, not hardware purchases.

That drafting choice is the hinge of the whole case. A company whose account terms contain an enforceable Arbitration Agreement with a class waiver would ordinarily have met this complaint with a Motion to Compel Arbitration, and 98 million claimants would each have held an individual claim worth a few dollars. Plaintiffs' firms would then have faced the choice this site covers every week: abandon the claims, or file Mass Arbitration demands in the tens or hundreds of thousands and let the provider's fee schedule do the work. Google itself has seen that dynamic from the other side, in the advertiser arbitration campaign run against it under a different contract.

Rodriguez shows the alternative. One trial, one jury, one verdict, one fee award and one appeal, with a single court of appeals able to decide in one opinion whether the class device fits the claim. Companies redrafting consumer terms after the 2024 AAA and JAMS mass-arbitration rule changes have been weighing exactly this trade-off: the certainty of court and the risk of a class verdict against the per-claim fees and batching fights of mass arbitration.

What the appeal means for defendants, claimants' counsel and funders

For consumer-facing defendants. The case is a reminder that a Rule 23 class verdict is still possible, and still large, for privacy claims where the alleged misconduct is a uniform, company-wide statement. Judge Seeborg's reasoning links the "highly offensive" element to the broken promise rather than to individual data, which, if affirmed, makes privacy-setting cases easier to certify. Companies whose settings pages promise more than their SDKs deliver face the clearest exposure. Drafters reviewing forum clauses should treat the choice between court and arbitration as a litigation-risk decision, not boilerplate.

For claimants' counsel. The fee award shows the economics of trying a consumer class to verdict: roughly $146.8 million on a five-year investment, but only after surviving decertification, a renewed Rule 50(b) motion and now an appeal that could take the fee to zero. The presence of Morgan & Morgan alongside two trial boutiques reflects how large plaintiffs' firms now staff and finance these cases. Counsel evaluating similar SDK-tracking claims will watch whether the Ninth Circuit endorses common proof of offensiveness.

For litigation funders. A judgment that must survive a multi-year appeal before any distribution is a duration risk, not just a merits risk. Post-judgment interest partly compensates, but funders pricing Third-Party Litigation Funding against consumer class verdicts will read Rodriguez as confirmation that the appeal, not the verdict, is when value is realized.

For class members. Nothing to file and nothing to do. If the verdict is affirmed, notice and claim instructions will follow; if it is reversed, there will be no payment from this case.

Timeline of Rodriguez v. Google

Date	Event
1 July 2016	Class period begins
July 2020	Complaint filed in the Northern District of California
19 August 2025	Jury trial opens before Chief Judge Richard Seeborg
3 September 2025	Verdict: $425,651,947; liable on two privacy claims, not liable under CDAFA
30 January 2026	Decertification denied; $2.36 billion disgorgement and injunction denied
2 March 2026	Judgment with interest stands at $440,345,685.40
28 August 2026	Renewed JMOL denied; plaintiffs' new-trial motion denied; $146.8 million fee award
21 September 2026	Google files notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit
5 October 2026	Last day for any cross-appeal under FRAP 4(a)(3)

FAQ

Is Google appealing the $425 million privacy verdict?

Yes. Google filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit on 21 September 2026, after Judge Seeborg denied its renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law on 28 August 2026. No briefing schedule had been set as of 23 September.

What did the jury decide in Rodriguez v. Google?

On 3 September 2025 the jury found Google liable for invasion of privacy under the California Constitution and for intrusion upon seclusion, awarded $425,651,947, and found Google not liable under the California computer-crime statute (CDAFA).

When will class members get paid?

Only after the appeal is resolved. The official case website says there is no money available now and that class members will be notified with claim instructions if funds become available.

How much will each person receive?

No distribution plan exists yet, but after the $146.8 million fee award and requested costs, the fund is about $281 million, or under $3 per class member before administration costs.

Who is in the Google Web & App Activity class?

People who, from 1 July 2016 onward, had Web & App Activity or supplemental Web & App Activity turned off while a non-Google Android app still sent their activity to Google through the Firebase SDK or the Google Mobile Ads SDK.

Why wasn't this case sent to arbitration?

Google's general Terms of Service send disputes to the federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California, and contain no class action waiver for account holders, so the claims could proceed as a certified class in federal court.