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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

3rd Circuit vacates dismissal of data breach suit

Courts Appellate Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Class Action Third Circuit Data Breach

Courts

On September 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated the dismissal of a class action alleging that a defendant pharmaceutical research company’s negligence led to a data breach. According to the opinion, the plaintiff, who is a former employee of the defendant’s subsidiary, provided her sensitive personal and financial information in exchange for the defendant’s agreement, pursuant to the plaintiff’s employment agreement, to “take appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality and security” of this information. After plaintiff ended her employment with the company, a hacking group accessed the defendant’s servers through a phishing attack and stole sensitive information pertaining to current and former employees. In addition to exfiltrating the data, the hackers installed malware to encrypt the data stored on the defendant’s servers and held the decryption tools for ransom. The defendant informed current and former employees of the breach and encouraged them to take precautionary measures. To mitigate potential harm, the plaintiff took immediate action by conducting a review of her financial records and credit reports for unauthorized activity, among other things. As a result of the breach, the plaintiff alleged that she has sustained a variety of injuries—primarily the risk of identity theft and fraud—in addition to the investment of time and money to mitigate potential harm. The district court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss based on lack of Article III standing, concluding “that [the plaintiff's] risk of future harm was not imminent, but ‘speculative,’ because she had not yet experienced actual identity theft or fraud.”

On the appeal, the 3rd Circuit noted that the district court “erred in dismissing [the plaintiff’s] contract claims, which are raised in Counts III (breach of implied contract) and IV (breach of contract),” arising from her employment agreement. The appellate court wrote that the plaintiff “has alleged an injury stemming from the breach—the risk of identity theft or fraud—that is sufficiently imminent and concrete,” because the defendant “expressly contracted to ‘take appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality and security’ of plaintiff’s information in [the plaintiff’s] employment agreement.” The appellate court also noted that in an “increasingly digitalized world, an employer's duty to protect its employees’ sensitive information has significantly broadened.” The 3rd Circuit vacated the judgment on all counts and remanded the dispute to the district court for consideration of the merits of the claims.