Hain Celestial Securities Class Action Settlement

Who Is Eligible?

You may be eligible to file a claim if you:

• The class is every person and entity that bought or otherwise acquired Hain Celestial publicly traded common stock, and exchange-traded call and put options on that stock, from 5 November 2013 through 10 February 2017 inclusive, and was damaged as a result.
• Options count here. That is worth saying plainly, because many securities settlements exclude them and this one does not. Call and put contracts on Hain common stock are inside the class, and the theory is symmetrical: the alleged misstatements are said to have inflated the stock and the calls while deflating the puts.
• Holding through the bad news is what creates a claim. Lead plaintiffs point to three corrective disclosures, each released after the market closed, on 21 January 2016, 15 August 2016 and 10 February 2017. The price moves they rely on came the following trading days, 22 January 2016, 16 August 2016 and 13 February 2017.
• Several groups are carved out. Defendants, their immediate families, anyone who was an officer, director or control person of Hain during the class period and their families, entities those people control, and Hain's parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.
• Shares bought through a Hain employee retirement or benefit plan are also excluded, to the extent the purchase was made through the plan. If you held Hain both inside a company plan and in an ordinary brokerage account, only the brokerage side belongs on your form.
• The defendants are the company itself and four individuals: Irwin D. Simon, Pasquale Conte, John Carroll and Stephen J. Smith. All of them deny wrongdoing, and the settlement records no admission by anyone.

How Much Can You Get?

The fund is $35,000,000 in cash. Against that, lead plaintiffs' damages consultant estimates an average recovery of about $0.28 per allegedly damaged share of Hain common stock, before any court-approved deduction.

The deductions are already quantified, which is unusual and helpful. Co-lead counsel will ask for attorneys' fees of no more than 33.3% of the fund, being $11,655,000, and for litigation expenses of no more than $950,000. Add notice costs, administration and taxes, and the same filing puts the average at roughly $0.18 per damaged share if the court grants that request in full.

Both figures are averages spread across every eligible share. Neither is a promise to you. What you actually receive turns on when you bought, whether you sold, how many valid claims come in, and what the court finally awards.

There is also a floor, and it is the part most people miss. If your pro-rata payment calculates to less than $10.00, no distribution is made to you at all. Your claim drops out of the calculation and that money goes to the claimants who cleared the line. As a rough illustration only, at an average near $0.18 a share a position of well under a hundred shares sits close to that threshold.

One point of law shapes the whole calculation. The claims run under Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act, so a loss only counts where the decline was caused by the disclosure of the allegedly misrepresented information. A price drop for unrelated reasons, in a bad month for food stocks or for the market generally, does nothing for your claim.

How to File Your Claim

The administrator has not published a claim form for this settlement. The steps below are what filing will involve once one exists.

• Start with your brokerage records, because nothing can be filed without them. You need every purchase, acquisition and sale of Hain common stock and of exchange-traded Hain options between 5 November 2013 and 10 February 2017, with trade dates, share or contract counts and prices, plus whatever position you already held going into 5 November 2013.
• The administrator is Verita Global, LLC, appointed by the court. Claim forms go to Hain Celestial Securities Settlement, care of Verita Global. You submit yours online through the settlement website, or you post it on paper.
• Get that web address from the administrator or from the postcard notice mailed to you, not from a search result. Securities settlements attract imitation sites, and the court-approved notice is the document that carries the real address and your claim number.
• The deadline is 13 October 2026, online or by post. That date is not arbitrary: the settlement terms set the claim deadline at fifteen calendar days before the settlement hearing, and the court scheduled that hearing for 28 October 2026.
• If you would rather keep your own right to sue Hain over this, you have to say so separately, and sooner. Requests for exclusion are due twenty-one calendar days before the hearing, which is 7 October 2026. Do nothing and you stay in the class, give up those claims, and receive nothing.
• The hearing itself is public and runs by telephone at 11:00 in the morning on 28 October 2026 before Magistrate Judge Lee G. Dunst. The court published the dial-in: 669-254-5252, meeting ID 165 624 3344, passcode 921609.
• Payment comes later, and not quickly. Money moves only once the court has approved the settlement and the plan of allocation, any appeals are exhausted, and every claim has been reviewed.

Frequently Asked Questions