Settlement amounts can skyrocket to the millions or billions of dollars. In fact, the largest class action lawsuit award was from the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which paid out $206 billion to 46 US states to cover public healthcare costs that resulted from tobacco-induced diseases. More recently, Facebook users filed a class action lawsuit against the social media giant because their personal data had been accessed without their consent—otherwise known as a data breach. Facebook agreed to pay $650 million in this 2021 class action lawsuit.