Ashley Madison Data Breach Class Action Lawsuits Go to JPML

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Last week, a plaintiff in one of the five class action lawsuits accusing adultery matchmaking service Ashley Madison of failing to protect users’ personal data urged the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to consolidate the actions in Missouri federal court.

Plaintiff “Jane Doe,” the anonymous woman who initiated the Ashley Madison class action lawsuit, argued in her motion that since she was the first to file the complaint in Missouri court, the claims should be consolidated there.

Doe pointed out that most of the plaintiffs in the other lawsuits filed their claims after the hackers who stole user names, payment records and other information and then released 10 gigabytes of that data online earlier this month. These class action lawsuits involve similar claims against Avid Life Media Inc. and propose nationwide Classes covering millions of Ashley Madison users, says the plaintiff in her motion.

“The Eastern District’s location, being virtually in the middle of the continental United States, assures that cost and inconvenience will be minimized to the greatest extent possible for all concerned, whether they hail from the East Coast, the West Coast, or any point in between,” argued the plaintiff in her motion to transfer the Ashley Madison class action lawsuits.

Avid Life Media, which runs the Ashley Madison website, announced the breach in July, noting that no full credit card numbers were disclosed to hackers. The company said that it is cooperating with investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies to prosecute the hackers. The company also recently offered a CA$500,000 ($376,260) reward for information about the hack, and announced Friday that CEO Noel Biderman has agreed to step down.

“We are actively adjusting to the attack on our business and members’ privacy by criminals,” the company said in a statement on Friday. “We will continue to provide access to our unique platforms for our worldwide members,” it continued.

Avid Life Media also runs sites that facilitate matchmaking between older women and younger men as well as older men and younger women, called Cougar Life and Established Men, that were not affected by the data breach.

In her motion filed Thursday, the plaintiff also pointed out that the hackers, who call themselves the “Impact Team,” carried their attack out quickly and released the data to the public shortly after. For that reason, argued the plaintiff, the JPML should ignore some of the factors it would usually consider when consolidating lawsuits into multidistrict litigation.

“The primary questions here are: Where cost and inconvenience will be minimized, and the experience, skill, and caseloads of available judges,” wrote Doe in her motion to consolidate the Ashley Madison class action lawsuits. “On all of these factors, the panel should choose the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri as the transferee court.”

The plaintiff is represented by John J. Driscoll, Gregory J. Pals and Christopher J. Quinn of The Driscoll Law Firm PC, and Douglas P. Dowd, William T. Dowd and Alex R. Lumaghi of Dowd & Dowd PC.

The Ashley Madison Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is In Re: Ashley Madison Customer Data Security Breach, Case No. 2669, before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

UPDATE: On Dec. 9, 2015, several class action lawsuits filed over the Ashley Madison data breach were consolidated in Missouri federal court.

UPDATE 2: On Apr. 6, 2016, a Missouri federal judge ruled that plaintiffs seeking to act as Class representatives in the Ashley Madison data breach class action lawsuit cannot use pseudonyms and must disclose their real names.

UPDATE 3: On Apr. 18, 2016, the makers of the Ashley Madison dating website, Avid Dating Life Inc., argued that the Class shouldnot be able to use private informationeven though it has been leaked to the press.

UPDATE 4: On June 24, 2016, in response to a recent federal court ruling, 18 plaintiffs who have filed suit against Ashley Madison over the highly-publicized data breach have amended their complaint to include their own names.

UPDATE 5: On Aug. 29, 2016, the companies behind the extramarital dating website Ashley Madison asked a federal judge to halt litigation over last summer’s data breach and refer the plaintiffs’ claims to private arbitration.

UPDATE 6: On July 14, 2017, Ashley Madison’s parent company agreed topay $11.2 million to settleclaims arising from a data breach that revealed personal information about those using the adultery dating website. UPDATE 7: The Ashley Madison data breach class action settlement is now open.

 Click here to file a claim. 

UPDATE 8: On Jan. 31, 2018, Top Class Actions viewers who filed a valid claim for the Ashley Madison data breach class action settlement started receiving checks worth as much as $2,915. Congratulations to everyone who got PAID!