Lawsuits against Tyler Technologies fall into four main groups: class actions alleging its Odyssey court software caused wrongful arrests and jail over-detentions, litigation over data breaches that exposed sealed court records and personal information, contract disputes with government agencies whose projects ran years late and tens of millions over budget, and employee claims for unpaid overtime. Several have produced settlements in the millions; at least one is nearing settlement in 2026; and the company has denied wrongdoing in each.1Injustice Watch/Chicago Tribune investigation
Tyler is the second-largest government software vendor in the world and holds an estimated 55% share of the U.S. court case-management market, with roughly 47,000 installations across 15,000 locations. That reach is why its software failures end up in federal court.
Wrongful Arrest and Over-Detention Cases
The most serious claims against Tyler allege that defects in its Odyssey case-management software have caused people to be arrested on dismissed charges, held past their release dates, or wrongly flagged in criminal records.
Chaplin v. McFadden (North Carolina)
North Carolina’s Administrative Office of the Courts contracted with Tyler for a roughly $100 million, ten-year rollout of Odyssey under the name “eCourts.” The pilot went live on February 13, 2023, in Wake, Johnston, Harnett, and Lee counties. State administrators identified at least 573 software defects within months.
Plaintiff Timia Chaplin alleged she was rearrested in Wake County on charges that had been dismissed nearly a month earlier because of an eCourts glitch. Christopher Clegg, another Wake County defendant, sat in jail for almost a month after being sentenced to time served because his judgment was never transferred to jail paperwork. Defense attorneys reported inaccurate speeding tickets, transposed citation numbers, and refused payments on pleaded-down charges. Harnett County closed district courtrooms for a week. The North Carolina DMV reported approximately 19,000 data errors flowing from eCourts, more than 60% of which incorrectly indicated fatalities in incidents where no one had died.
Affected individuals filed a class action in 2023 in the Middle District of North Carolina, originally captioned Chaplin v. Rowe and later Chaplin v. McFadden (No. 23-cv-423). The complaint alleges Tyler’s software caused wrongful arrests and extended detentions, including people arrested multiple times on the same warrant or held past their legal release dates.
Tyler moved to dismiss, arguing it was “a software vendor, not a state or local authority with the power to arrest or detain.” The court denied that motion in March 2025, while noting that whether Tyler owed a legal duty to the plaintiffs remained an open question for a later stage. The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts and other defendants were dismissed, leaving Tyler and Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden as the remaining defendants.
On June 3, 2026, plaintiffs’ attorneys filed a motion to stay discovery, saying the parties expected to finalize a settlement within 30 days. Tyler said any resolution was intended to “avoid the costs and uncertainty of litigation” with no admission of liability.
Alameda County, California
Alameda County Superior Court implemented Odyssey Court Manager on August 1, 2016. The county public defender’s office filed motions in more than 2,000 cases within months, alleging that software flaws caused mistaken arrests, unnecessary jail time, and individuals being wrongly registered as sex offenders. Public defenders counted 150 unnecessary days of jail time for their clients.
In a March 3, 2017, ruling, Presiding Judge Morris Jacobson acknowledged that “Odyssey has resulted in unlawful arrests and searches” but denied the public defender’s motion to compel the court to process accurate records within 24 hours or revert to the old system. The court held that clerical errors affecting Fourth Amendment rights “will occur regardless of the case management system used.” Tyler was not a party to the case. It publicly attributed the problems to the county’s decision to transition from a 40-year-old system “before they were ready.” The county’s court executive officer said the jurisdiction was effectively “stuck with” the software because of budget constraints.
Turnage v. Oldham (Shelby County, Tennessee)
After Shelby County installed a new jail computer system in November 2016, eight plaintiffs filed a class action in the Western District of Tennessee, Turnage v. Oldham (No. 2:16-cv-02907), alleging the system caused the “untimely release of detainees,” meaning people were confined after their legal authority for detention had expired. Defendants included the sheriff, jail administrators, the county, Tyler Technologies, and other vendors.
The court partially denied Tyler’s motion to dismiss in October 2018. On December 9, 2021, it granted final approval of a settlement establishing a $4.9 million fund to compensate detainees based on the length of their over-detention. The settlement also required the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office to maintain a processing office for intake screening and to ensure arrestees could not be admitted without specific charges supported by a warrant or affidavit. Defendants denied wrongdoing.
Data Breach Litigation and Security Incidents
2022 Odyssey Portal Exposure
A security flaw in Tyler’s Odyssey Portal software allowed nonpublic court records to be accessed without any authentication check on direct case requests. The California State Bar disclosed that approximately 260,000 confidential attorney disciplinary records had been exposed. The court-records aggregator Judyrecords reported inadvertently downloading records from roughly 30 Odyssey portals nationwide, with nonpublic records reaching “well into the millions.” Exposed material included sealed cases, juvenile criminal records with names and dates of birth, and sentencing information from jurisdictions including California, Kansas, Texas, Georgia, and New Mexico.
Tyler said it remediated all affected portals by April 21, 2022. The California State Bar hired an outside IT security firm and said it would seek reimbursement from Tyler. Judyrecords reported by June 2026 that it had removed more than 1.39 million Odyssey Portal cases deemed nonpublic.
2023 Maine and Multi-State Shutdowns
On September 15, 2023, the Maine Judicial Branch disabled online public access to nearly all court documents after identifying security vulnerabilities in the 2018 version of Odyssey. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency later warned that the flaws could allow an unauthenticated attacker to reach sensitive documents by manipulating identifiers in URLs. Maine officials said a full fix required a software upgrade that could take “several months.” Similar shutdowns followed in California, Kansas, and other states running Odyssey.
September 2020 Ransomware Attack
Tyler detected unauthorized access to its internal phone and IT systems on September 23, 2020, in an incident reported to involve the RansomExx ransomware strain. The company initially described the impact as limited to its internal corporate network but warned customers on September 26 that some had reported suspicious logins to Tyler-provided applications using Tyler credentials, and advised all customers to change passwords. Tyler reported approximately $1.5 million in lost services revenue from the attack in its third-quarter 2020 earnings.
Casey v. Tyler Technologies (2024 Breach Settlement)
On March 23, 2024, Tyler experienced another cybersecurity incident, this one involving unauthorized access to personally identifiable information: names, contact details, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and taxpayer identification numbers. Affected individuals were notified in May and June 2024.
A class action, Casey v. Tyler Technologies, Inc. (Case No. CJ-2024-5929), alleged that the breach resulted from the company’s failure to implement reasonable cybersecurity measures. Tyler agreed to a settlement offering class members up to $3,500 in reimbursement for documented fraud-related losses, three years of credit monitoring with a $1 million identity theft insurance policy, and either reimbursement for up to four hours of lost time at $25 per hour or a $75 alternative cash payment. The claims deadline was May 29, 2025. Tyler did not admit wrongdoing.
Contract Failures Behind the Lawsuits
A joint investigation by Injustice Watch and the Chicago Tribune identified 18 federal lawsuits nationwide involving disputes over Tyler contracts, with a recurring pattern of delays, cost overruns, and agencies that felt trapped by high switching costs.1Injustice Watch/Chicago Tribune investigation
Three Tyler projects for Cook County and Illinois state agencies grew from an initial combined price of $75 million to a projected cost exceeding $250 million. Tyler’s 2015 contract to replace Cook County’s 1970s-era property tax mainframe was originally priced at $30 million with a December 2019 completion date; it ran five years late, with a launch eventually set for April 2025. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas called the agreement “possibly the worst technology contract” the county had ever written. Internal records revealed calendar calculations off by 73 years and what officials described as “blatant spelling errors” in project plans. Eight different project managers cycled through the assignment. County officials considered firing Tyler in 2019 but declined after the research firm Gartner warned that switching vendors would be more expensive and slower than pressing on.
Cook County Circuit Court’s $36.5 million Odyssey contract, signed in April 2017, ended with the traffic court division going live 18 months late in December 2022. Cook County has authorized $48 million in total payments through 2027. A 2016 Illinois Supreme Court contract to unify all 102 county courthouses on a single platform grew from $8.4 million to $89 million; the state auditor general criticized the project for lacking independent oversight.
Elsewhere, the Genesee County 9-1-1 Consortium in Michigan filed a breach-of-contract suit in August 2023 (No. 2:23-cv-12104, E.D. Mich.), alleging Tyler had provided false assurances about its technology. The case was dismissed by stipulation in January 2024 after mediation, indicating a private settlement.
Employee Overtime Class Actions
Kudatsky v. Tyler Technologies
Former implementation consultant Aaron Kudatsky filed a class action in November 2019 in the Northern District of California (Case No. 3:19-cv-07647), alleging Tyler misclassified implementation consultants as exempt from overtime and required them to work more than 40 hours per week without extra pay. In May 2020, Judge William Alsup conditionally certified a class of consultants and coordinators who had worked for the company since May 2017.
Tyler agreed in November 2021 to pay $3.15 million to settle. About $2.4 million was distributed among 294 class members, with individual payments ranging from roughly $200 to more than $10,000 depending on work history. The settlement did not require Tyler to change its employment practices.
Harrison v. Tyler Technologies
Talia N. Harrison sued Tyler in the Eastern District of Texas (No. 4:21-cv-00607), alleging the company willfully failed to pay overtime during her time as a senior project manager and implementation analyst. In November 2022, Judge Amos Mazzant granted partial summary judgment for Tyler, ruling that Harrison’s work as an implementation analyst was exempt but allowing her project-manager claim to proceed. The parties settled in March 2023 for $23,000 with no admission of liability. The court later awarded Harrison $25,810.95 in attorney’s fees and $1,271 in costs.
What Tyler Says in Response
Tyler’s posture has been consistent across these cases. In the North Carolina litigation, it argued it is a software vendor without arrest or detention authority. In Alameda, it said the county had moved off a 40-year-old system before it was ready. In each settlement, from Shelby County to the 2024 data breach class action, the company has denied wrongdoing and framed resolution as a way to avoid the costs of litigation. Tyler has attributed recurring project delays to shifting government leadership, poor legacy data, inadequate staffing at agencies, and the complexity of modernizing decades-old systems.