Five financial institutions have asked a U.S. District Court for class action status in their ongoing battle over Target's 2013 data breach, which compromised approximately 110 million credit and debit cards.
In their filings, the five plaintiffs – Umpqua Bank, Mutual Bank, Village Bank, CSE Federal Credit Union and First Federal Savings of Lorain – told the court a combined total of nearly 25,000 of their issued debit and credit cards were affected by the data breach. View the court documents here.
The vast majority were issued by Umpqua Bank, which said 14,282 of its Visa-branded debit cards were compromised in the Target data breach, according to court documents. Umpqua noted that at the time of the breach, it also had an impending merger with Sterling Savings Bank, which had approximately 7,314 debit and credit cards compromised.
First Federal Savings of Lorain reported that approximately 490 of its debit and credit cards were compromised in the data breach. Village Bank reported approximately 970 debit cards were compromised, Mutual Bank reported approximately 1,391 debit cards were compromised and CSE FCU said approximately 445 of its debit cards were compromised. All four financial institutions said the cards were Visa-branded.
“As Target implicitly conceded by its recent failed attempt to institute a class-type settlement with MasterCard, we believe this case is appropriate for certification as a class,” Charles Zimmerman of Zimmerman Reed PLLP and Karl Cambronne of Chestnut Cambronne PA, co-lead plaintiffs' counsel, said in a statement to CU Times. “We will continue working to hold Target accountable for the significant losses financial institutions suffered, including for the costs of reissuing compromised cards and fraud losses that occurred as a result of the data breach.”
Earlier this year, Target and MasterCard negotiated a $19 million settlement for card issuers affected by the breach, but the five financial institutions fought it, telling a Minnesota District Court judge that, among other things, card issuers should've been included in the negotiations and that $19 million didn't cover their costs of dealing with the breach.
The judge denied the injunction request, saying that although “the terms of the settlement do not appear altogether fair or reasonable,” MasterCard and Target were free to negotiate a settlement on their own in part because the card issuers lacked class action status. In May, the settlement derailed anyway when fewer than the requisite 90% of issuers accepted the offer by Target's May 20 deadline.
In the latest filings, attorney Gordon Rudd told the court he met twice with the defendants' counsel to discuss the class certification but the two sides couldn't agree on the resolution of any part of the motion. The hearing on class certification is scheduled for Sept. 10.
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