Who Pays, Who Lobbies — Open Settlements Joined to Parent Companies, Lobbying Disclosures, and PAC Spending

Open U.S. class-action settlements (frozen 288-row October 2026 build) joined by hand to the defendants' accountable parent companies, federal lobbying disclosures (LDA filings, 2025+2026), and FEC PAC disbursements (2024 cycle + 2026 cycle to date). No fuzzy matching: 244 of 288 tracker rows resolve to 236 distinct parents; $4,517,968,881 of $6,350,402,822 in published funds covered; 44 rows are excluded and listed (government, multi-defendant, joint, collective, ambiguous) with no fund attributed to any company. Tier-1 PAC matching is exact connected-organization name only; a hand-built tier-2 layer adds 18 subsidiary/division/brand and blank-connected-org PACs across 12 parents (+$10,905,512.69). Files: joined-publish.csv (236 parents), mapping-publish.csv (288 settlement-level attributions with per-row basis), pac-subsidiary-map-publish.csv (18 tier-2 committees with evidence), fec-tier2-summary-publish.csv, topline-publish.md, exclusions-publish.md, README.md (cite-as line, structural caveat columns, and the Section 5 editorial-judgment disclaimer). Windows differ by source and are not annualized: settlement funds are open funds as of Oct 2026; LDA covers 2025+2026 filings; FEC covers the 2024 cycle plus the 2026 cycle to date. An LDA status of no_direct_parent_lda_filings_found means the parent's own names were searched in both the landed LDA database and the live LDA API and no filings under those names exist in either; it is a statement about these sources, not proof a company never lobbies. Cite as: Class Action Hero (2026). Who Pays, Who Lobbies — Open Settlements Joined to Parent Companies, Lobbying Disclosures, and PAC Spending [Data set]. CC-BY 4.0. Derived from the frozen October 2026 settlements build deposited under base concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23463525 (exact frozen version DOI pinned in related_identifiers).