Now that a U.S. District Court has granted class action status to a suit brought by five financial institutions against Target for damages related to the retailer's massive 2013 data breach, as many as 9,000 credit unions and other institutions should soon receive paperwork about participating in the suit, according to one of the attorneys in the case.
Charles Zimmerman of Zimmerman Reed PLLP (pictured), which is now the co-lead counsel for the class, told CU Times a court-approved notice should begin arriving in financial institutions' mailboxes in a few weeks. Financial institutions don't need to opt into the class, Zimmerman said; those that receive the notice are already deemed part of the class action.
“The only thing you need to do if you're a financial institution is calculate your reissuance costs, calculate your fraud losses, and calculate your other losses from personnel or back office work that you had to conduct,” he said. “If the case proceeds to trial and we win, then there'll be a claim form for you to file with your losses.”
If financial institutions want to pursue Target individually, they'll need to opt out of the class action and will probably have about a month or six weeks after receiving the notice to make that decision, he said.
For financial institutions that accepted Target's Visa settlement in recent weeks, it may not be too late to be part of the class action, Zimmerman noted. That agreement required financial institutions that took the full settlement to forfeit their right to sue Target over the breach, but Zimmerman said financial institutions can still rescind their decision if they haven't cashed their checks.
“Credit unions incurred at least $30 million in card reissuance costs related to the Target breach and I'm encouraged this case was awarded class action status,” CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle said after the decision was announced.
Nussle and NAFCU Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel Carrie Hunt both said in separate statements that they urge Congress to enact national data security standards for retailers.
Zimmerman said the case is currently set to go to trial in the middle of the third quarter of 2016.
“I think whether it's a data breach from Target or The Home Depot or whatever, the [financial institutions] just shouldn't be bearing that loss,” he said. “It's really the person who's responsible for holding the data that should be responsible.”
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