Sign up to create alerts for Instruments,
Economic Events and content by followed authors
Free Sign Up Already have an account? Sign In
Quotes
All Instrument Types
- All Instrument Types
- Indices
- Equities
- ETFs
- Funds
- Commodities
- Currencies
- Crypto
- Bonds
- Certificates
Please try another search
Free Webinar - Decode the market's secrets! | Tuesday, May 30, 2023 | 01:00PM EDT Enroll Now
Target fails to end banks' lawsuit over data breach
Published Dec 02, 2014 08:58PM ET
© Reuters. The sign outside the Target store in Arvada
By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Target Corp's bid to dismiss a lawsuit by banks seeking to recoup money they spent reimbursing fraudulent charges and issuing new credit and debit cards because of the retailer's late 2013 data breach.
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson in St. Paul, Minnesota said Target played a "key role" in allowing hackers to infiltrate its computer systems.
He said this justified letting the five bank plaintiffs, which seek class-action status on behalf of lenders nationwide, pursue much of their lawsuit accusing the second-largest U.S. discount retailer of negligence and violating Minnesota consumer protection laws. The banks are seeking millions of dollars in damages.
"Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that Target's actions and inactions - disabling certain security features and failing to heed the warning signs as the hackers' attack began - caused foreseeable harm to plaintiffs," Magnuson wrote. "Plaintiffs have also plausibly alleged that Target's conduct both caused and exacerbated the harm they suffered."
Target did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has said at least 40 million credit cards were compromised in the breach, and that as many as 110 million people may have had personal information, such as email addresses and phone numbers, stolen.
Target has also said the bank plaintiffs were "sophisticated parties" that lacked the close ties to the retailer necessary to support their legal claims.
The plaintiffs include Umpqua Holdings Corp's Umpqua Bank in Roseburg, Oregon; Mutual Bank in Whitman, Massachusetts; Village Bank in St. Francis, Minnesota; CSE Federal Credit Union in Lake Charles, Louisiana; and First Federal Savings of Lorain in Lorain, Ohio.
They are seeking class-action status on behalf of banks and credit unions with customers who used credit and debit cards at Target between Nov. 1 and Dec. 19, 2013.
Consumers are also pursuing related class-action litigation over the breach, and Target has asked Magnuson to throw out that case.
The case is In re: Target Corporation Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota, No. 14-md-02522.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Related Articles
Add Chart to Comment
Confirm Block
Are you sure you want to block %USER_NAME%?
By doing so, you and %USER_NAME% will not be able to see any of each other's Investing.com's posts.
%USER_NAME% was successfully added to your Block List
Since you’ve just unblocked this person, you must wait 48 hours before renewing the block.
Report this comment
I feel that this comment is:
Comment flagged
Thank You!
Your report has been sent to our moderators for review
Add a Comment
We encourage you to use comments to engage with other users, share your perspective and ask questions of authors and each other. However, in order to maintain the high level of discourse we’ve all come to value and expect, please keep the following criteria in mind:
Enrich the conversation, don’t trash it.
Stay focused and on track. Only post material that’s relevant to the topic being discussed.
Be respectful. Even negative opinions can be framed positively and diplomatically. Avoid profanity, slander or personal attacks directed at an author or another user. Racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination will not be tolerated.
Perpetrators of spam or abuse will be deleted from the site and prohibited from future registration at Investing.com’s discretion.