The Virgin Galactic securities settlement is an $8.5 million cash class action settlement for investors who bought Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (SPCE) or Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. (IPOA) common stock between July 10, 2019, and August 4, 2022. To share in the fund, you must file a Proof of Claim by August 13, 2026. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Case No. 1:21-cv-03070), and a final fairness hearing is scheduled for July 9, 2026.
Who Qualifies as a Class Member
The settlement class covers all persons and entities that purchased or acquired publicly traded shares of Virgin Galactic (ticker: SPCE) or Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. (ticker: IPOA) common stock during the class period of July 10, 2019, through August 4, 2022. That window captures shareholders who held IPOA before the SPAC merger as well as those who bought SPCE after Virgin Galactic went public in October 2019.
One important carve-out: if you held Virgin Galactic shares through an ERISA retirement plan, do not include those plan-held shares on your own claim form. Plan administrators file on behalf of the plan.
How Much You Can Expect to Recover
Not every class member receives the same per-share recovery. The plan of allocation splits the class into two tiers reflecting the litigation’s procedural history.
Shares purchased between July 12, 2021, and September 2, 2021, the window surrounding the Unity 22 flight and the FAA grounding that followed, are treated as “Active Claims.” The estimated recovery for these is roughly $0.075 per damaged share.
Shares purchased during the rest of the class period are “Dismissed Claims” and carry a much smaller estimated recovery of about $0.0012 per damaged share.
Actual payments depend on how many valid claims come in, how many shares each claimant held, and the specific dates and prices of purchases and sales. Gains and losses are calculated on a first-in, first-out basis. Claims that would pay less than $10 will not be distributed.
Lead counsel intend to ask the court for attorneys’ fees of up to one-third of the fund and litigation expenses up to $1.55 million. Notice and administration costs are estimated at approximately $985,000. These amounts come off the top before distributions.
How to File a Claim
You can file online at virgingalacticsecuritiessettlement.com or by mail to the claims administrator:
Strategic Claims Services
P.O. Box 230
600 N. Jackson St., Suite 205
Media, PA 19063
The administrator can be reached by phone at (866) 274-4004 or by email at info@strategicclaims.net.
Have your brokerage records ready. You will need confirmations or monthly statements showing the dates, share counts, and prices of every purchase and sale of SPCE or IPOA stock during and around the class period. Supporting documentation is required.
Online filing is the preferred method. If you file by mail, each transaction has to be entered manually by the administrator, and the settlement notice states that mailed claims will have their recognized loss reduced by the greater of $5 or 1% to cover the added processing cost.
Do not contact Virgin Galactic, the individual defendants, their lawyers, or the court with questions about your claim. All inquiries should go to the claims administrator or to lead counsel, Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP and The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
Key Deadlines
- Objection deadline: June 9, 2026. Any class member who wants to object to the settlement or ask to speak at the fairness hearing must do so by this date.
- Exclusion deadline: June 18, 2026. If you want to opt out and preserve any individual claim against the defendants, your request for exclusion must be submitted by this date.
- Final fairness hearing: July 9, 2026. Judge Nina R. Morrison will consider whether to grant final approval.
- Claim filing deadline: August 13, 2026. All Proof of Claim forms must be filed online or postmarked by this date.
Preliminary approval was granted on March 11, 2026. The settlement is not final until after the July 9, 2026 hearing.
What the Lawsuit Was About
The class action, formally captioned Shane Lavin, et al. v. Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc., et al., accused Virgin Galactic and several of its officers of making materially false and misleading statements about the company’s safety record, engineering readiness, and progress toward commercial spaceflight. Named individual defendants included CEO Michael Colglazier, former CEO George Whitesides, CFO Doug Ahrens, and former CFO Jon Campanga. The court-appointed lead plaintiffs were Robert Scheele and Mark Kusnier.
According to the complaint, the company concealed structural and safety problems with its spacecraft while publicly projecting that routine commercial operations were near. Plaintiffs pointed to a pattern of undisclosed flight incidents, including a 2018 aborted test flight, a 2018 flight during which the reaction control system caused the spacecraft to roll at ten times its recommended maximum rate, and a February 2019 flight in which the horizontal stabilizers were destroyed due to an improperly applied thermal protection system. The complaint alleged that management publicly described that February 2019 flight as a success while internal safety staff warned that the maintenance organization was unsafe.
The stock drop at the heart of the case followed the July 11, 2021, “Unity 22” mission carrying Richard Branson. During the ascent, warning lights indicated the spacecraft had drifted from its approved entry glide cone, and it flew outside its FAA-designated airspace for one minute and 41 seconds. Virgin Galactic publicly called the flight “a safe and successful test flight” and did not initially notify the FAA of the deviation. On September 2, 2021, the FAA grounded the SpaceShipTwo vehicle pending a mishap investigation. Shares closed at $25.99 that day. The grounding was lifted on September 29, 2021.
Plaintiffs also alleged that insiders sold heavily into inflated prices during the class period, citing roughly $315 million in sales by Chamath Palihapitiya (about 10 million shares) and approximately $301 million received by Branson.
Virgin Galactic and the individual defendants agreed to the settlement while denying all allegations of wrongdoing.
The Separate Derivative Settlement
A separate shareholder derivative case, In re Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. Derivative Litigation, settled for a $2.75 million payment from the defendants’ insurers to Virgin Galactic itself, along with three years of corporate governance reforms. Preliminary approval of that settlement was granted on May 19, 2026, with a final hearing set for July 28, 2026.
That settlement is not something individual investors file a claim for. Derivative recoveries go to the company, not to shareholders. If you bought SPCE or IPOA shares during the class period, the securities class action described above is the one that pays you directly.