Class action litigation alleging that Facebook Inc. unlawfully displayed users' names and likenesses through its Sponsored Stories advertising program may soon be nearing its end.

 On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will hold a hearing on the plaintiffs' motion for final approval of the class action settlement in Fraley v. Facebook Inc., No. 3:11-cv-01726-RS. Both the plaintiffs and Facebook have expressed their support for the final approval of the $20 million settlement agreement, subject to several caveats.

 In December 2012, the court preliminarily approved the $20 million settlement after refusing to approve an earlier proposed agreement in August 2012. In ruling against the earlier settlement, the court said the parties had not sufficiently justified the lack of a direct payment to class members and found a "clear sailing" provision-which meant Facebook would not contest an award of $10 million in attorneys' fees-troubling.

 Under the revised agreement, each claimant would receive a $10 direct payment, and any remaining proceeds in the fund would be distributed to selected cy pres recipients. The settlement would also require the social networking site to provide certain injunctive relief, such as enhancing the notice and consent provision in the site's terms of service and creating a new tool allowing users to view the information displayed in Sponsored Stories.

 "The Settlement brings significant injunctive relief to more than 150 million Facebook users in the United States so that users will finally know when they are appearing in advertisements, can give their informed consent to appear in those advertisements, and can discontinue such appearances if they so wish[,]" the plaintiffs said in a memorandum in support of a motion for final approval of class action settlement filed June 7.

 The plaintiffs said class members submitted over 600,000 claims prior to the expiration of the claims period, thus exhausting $6.1 million out of the settlement fund. Given that $11.2 million will be available for class member and cy pres payments after fees and service awards are paid, the plaintiffs requested that the court increase the $10 payments to class members to $15.

 Although expressing its general approval of the settlement, Facebook described the awards to class claimants as "a windfall" and objected to the plaintiffs' $7.5 million fee request in a memorandum in support of the plaintiffs' motion filed June 14.

 The claimants "voluntarily signed up to use a free social-networking site and had some content they shared with their Friends shared again with those very same Friends. They paid Facebook no money at all and suffered no actual economic damages, much less injury. Yet they are being paid an amount that far exceeds any profit Facebook allegedly earned by using their names and likenesses[,]" the company contended.

 Facebook agreed that the court could exercise its discretion to increase payments to claimants to $15 each.

 Copyright 2013, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.