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Sony PlayStation Breach Results in Multiple Lawsuits
At least 25 lawsuits have been filed against Sony in U.S. federal courts since Sony admitted that its PlayStation game network was hacked and user data stolen. The lawsuits generally accuse Sony of negligence and breach of contract, for allowing the personal data of more than 100 million online video game users to be compromised and stolen. A motion has been filed to consolidate all the Sony lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
To succeed in the lawsuits, the key challenge is to establish that there were damages incurred as a result of the breach. Judges are just beginning to address whether the disclosure of someone’s personally identifiable information represents a loss of value, or if plaintiffs must show that they suffered additional costs as a result of the breach.
Recently, a federal judge in Oakland, California, declined to dismiss a proposed class-action lawsuit over a 2009 data breach at RockYou, a company which develops applications for social networking sites, including Facebook. The plaintiffs claimed that they provided personally identifiable information in exchange for products and services.
While U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton found that the allegation was sufficient to allow the lawsuit to proceed, she ruled that the case will fail if the plaintiffs cannot demonstrate tangible harm from the breach.
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