Vivint Lawsuit and the $189.7 Million Verdict Upheld

The Vivint lawsuit that produced a $189.7 million verdict was filed by rival home security company CPI Security Systems, which accused Vivint Smart Home of using door-to-door salespeople to lie to CPI’s customers and switch them to Vivint. A Charlotte federal jury handed down the verdict in February 2023, and on July 22, 2025, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the full award. Vivint has asked the appeals court to reconsider, and that petition is still pending.¹

What CPI Accused Vivint of Doing

CPI sued Vivint in September 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, alleging a coordinated scheme to poach customers using false statements at the door.² According to the complaint, Vivint representatives told CPI customers that Vivint had bought CPI, that CPI was going out of business, that Vivint was CPI’s parent company, or that they were there to perform an equipment upgrade on CPI’s behalf. None of that was true.³

Trial evidence included a Vivint corporate training video instructing salespeople to press themselves into customers’ homes and refuse to accept a no. Customers testified about representatives who posed as CPI employees, targeted elderly and visually impaired homeowners, and, in one instance, tried to enter a home three times before the resident called police. Once signed, customers were locked into multi-year monitoring and financing contracts that were hard to cancel.³

CPI documented complaints from 565 specific customers who switched to Vivint after being misled. An expert projected the true number at more than 11,000, working from the assumption that only about 5% of deceived customers file a formal complaint.² CPI pursued four claims: the federal Lanham Act, the North Carolina Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act, common-law unfair competition, and tortious interference with business relationships.

How the $189.7 Million Breaks Down

After a two-week trial before Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr., an eight-person jury returned a unanimous verdict on February 17, 2023, finding Vivint liable on all four counts.³ The award splits into two pieces.

Compensatory damages totaled $49.7 million, covering lost profits and disgorgement tied to the estimated 11,300 lost customers, $13.5 million in lost goodwill (calculated as 10% of CPI’s $135 million in marketing spend from 2016 to 2022), $10.8 million for corrective advertising to repair CPI’s reputation, and $1.5 million for internal costs of handling complaints and trying to retain targeted customers.²

Punitive damages came to $140 million. The jury found by clear and convincing evidence that Vivint’s conduct was willful or wanton. North Carolina caps punitive damages at three times total compensatory damages; three times $49.7 million is $149.1 million, so the $140 million award fell within the statutory ceiling.

The Fourth Circuit Appeal

Vivint first sought relief in the district court, asking for judgment as a matter of law, a damages reduction, or a new trial. On January 8, 2024, the reassigned judge (Judge Cogburn had recused after the verdict for a post-trial conflict) denied every motion.²

On appeal, Vivint pressed four main arguments and lost on each:

That CPI had to prove it personally relied on Vivint’s lies. The panel held that because CPI’s claim sounded in unfair competition rather than fraud, CPI only needed to show that the lies caused it harm.
That the $49.7 million in compensatory damages lacked evidentiary support. The court found expert testimony on marketing losses, corrective advertising, and customer-loss projections was more than enough.
That the three-to-one punitive cap should apply only to the $15 million in damages on claims eligible for punitives, capping punitives at $45 million. The court held the statute measures the cap against total compensatory damages.
That the trial court wrongly admitted evidence of regulatory actions against Vivint and wrongly refused to split the trial into separate compensatory and punitive phases. The court found no error.

Writing for a unanimous panel that included Judges DeAndrea Gist Benjamin and Nicole Berner, Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer called Vivint’s arguments “merely of the tilting-at-windmills variety” and affirmed the judgment in full on July 22, 2025.⁴ The court found the evidence supported the jury’s conclusion that Vivint salespeople “regularly and deliberately lied to CPI’s customers” to induce them to switch.⁵

Where the Case Stands Now

On August 5, 2025, Vivint filed a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc, and the Fourth Circuit temporarily stayed its mandate while the petition is under consideration. As of the most recent docket entry in August 2025, the petition had not been resolved, and no petition for U.S. Supreme Court review had been filed.¹

Ownership of Vivint changed hands weeks after the trial verdict. NRG Energy acquired Vivint Smart Home on March 10, 2023, in a deal worth roughly $2.6 billion ($12 per share), and Vivint now operates within NRG’s consumer services business.⁶ Responding to the appellate ruling, Vivint said the conduct at issue “occurred over a decade ago under prior ownership” and that the company is focused on “serving more than two million customers.”⁷ CPI CEO Ken Gill said after the verdict: “This case is not just about CPI’s business. We believe for at least 15 years, Vivint has been taking advantage of vulnerable people across the country through deceptive, misleading, and flat-out false practices. I hope today’s verdict will stop their deception for good.”⁸

Other Vivint Lawsuits and Enforcement Actions

The CPI case is the largest of many. Attorneys general from 16 states brought enforcement actions against Vivint between 2009 and 2022 over similar sales conduct.² If you found this page looking for a different Vivint case, the ones below are the most likely matches.

ADT Settlement (2018)

ADT sued Vivint in April 2017 in federal court in Palm Beach, Florida, alleging Vivint agents had misled nearly 1,000 ADT customers by posing as ADT representatives and claiming ADT had been bought out or was merging with Vivint. On the second day of trial, Vivint agreed to pay $10 million to settle, which ADT called its largest deceptive sales recovery at the time.⁹

FTC and DOJ Actions (2021)

In April 2021, the Department of Justice, on referral from the FTC, filed a complaint in the District of Utah alleging that Vivint sales representatives had pulled credit reports of people who never interacted with the company to help unqualified customers get financing. Some victims ended up with unauthorized Vivint accounts on their credit reports and were contacted by debt collectors for debts they never incurred. Vivint agreed to pay $20 million in civil penalties under a stipulated order.¹⁰ The FTC opened a claims process for more than 9,000 potentially affected consumers, and as of December 2024 was mailing checks totaling nearly $500,000 to those who filed valid claims.¹¹ Separately in 2021, the DOJ fined Vivint $3.2 million for making false statements to secure customer financing.³

State Attorney General Settlements

In 2013, the Ohio Attorney General resolved claims that Vivint charged higher monitoring fees than quoted, failed to give proper notice of the three-day cancellation right, and refused to honor valid cancellations.¹² In 2017, the Texas Attorney General settled after finding that Vivint had sent unregistered employees door-to-door since at least 2012.¹³

On July 31, 2025, nine days after the Fourth Circuit ruling, the New Jersey Attorney General announced a $200,000 settlement resolving allegations of high-pressure sales tactics, misleading sales information, billing inaccuracies, and cancellation difficulties dating back to 2008. Under the agreement Vivint must disclose full contract costs before signing, stop making false claims about local crime rates or affiliations with other alarm companies, honor the three-day cancellation right by removing equipment at no cost, and use only properly licensed employees for alarm work.¹⁴ Individual consumers seeking refunds from the earlier federal case should check the FTC’s Vivint Smart Home Settlement page for the current status of the claims fund.

1
CourtListener. CPI Security Systems, Inc. v. Vivint Smart Home, Inc., Docket No. 24-1120
2
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. CPI Security Systems, Inc. v. Vivint Smart Home, Inc., No. 24-1120
3
CPI Security. CPI Security Wins Deceptive Sales Practice Lawsuit Against Competitor Vivint Smart Home
4
Security Systems News. Vivint Appeal Fails as Court Affirms Judgment in CPI Lawsuit
5
Bloomberg Law. Vivint Remains on Hook for $190 Million Award as Appeal Fails
6
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. NRG Energy Q1 2023 Results
7
Security InfoWatch. CPI-Vivint Verdict Seen as Industry Turning Point for Door-to-Door Sales Ethics
8
Reuters. Vivint Hit With $189.7 Million Verdict for Stealing Security Rival’s Customers
9
ADT Investor Relations. Vivint to Pay ADT $10 Million to Settle Deceptive Sales Lawsuit
10
Federal Trade Commission. Vivint Smart Home, Inc., Case No. 192 3060
11
Federal Trade Commission. Vivint Smart Home Settlement
12
Ohio Attorney General. AG Files Enforcement Actions Against Home Security Companies
13
Texas Attorney General. AG Paxton Reaches Settlement With Vivint and Warns Texans About Unscrupulous Door-to-Door Alarm Systems Sales
14
New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Vivint Smart Home Inc. Agrees to Pay $200,000 to Resolve Allegations of Deceptive and Unlawful Practices