Plaintiffs Seek Cashless Adobe Data Breach Class Action Settlement

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According to recent court reports, the plaintiffs of the consolidated Adobe data breach class action lawsuits asked the presiding California federal judge on June 2 to approve a cashless settlement, claiming that there isn’t enough evidence to allege actual damages. The numerous data breach lawsuits allege Adobe Systems Inc. failed to protect users’ personal data during the October 2013 data breach that allowed hackers to access and steal 3 million payment card records from Adobe consumers.

The Adobe data breach class action lawsuits state that discovery and analysis by experts has confirmed the plaintiffs arguments that certain security measures could have prevented, or at the very least minimized, the data breach. However, the plaintiffs do state the discovery process for this Adobe class action lawsuit gave way to little or no evidence that plaintiffs and Class Members suffered identity theft or actual damages because of the Adobe data breach.

Furthermore, the plaintiffs pointed out that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission held a nonpublic investigation to determine if Adobe violated the FTC Act through deceptive and unfair acts that left consumer privacy and data security at risk. However, the agency closed its investigation in December of last year and did not take any action against Adobe.

According to the data breach class action lawsuit, “Although plaintiffs learned through discovery that Adobe’s security practices were inadequate, they also learned that the consequences of those practices were not as bad as they feared. Most importantly, discovery revealed that unencrypted payment card data was not, in fact, compromised.”

Adobe has promised to implement enhanced intrusion detection, encryption measures, and network segmentation, the plaintiffs informed U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh on June 2, which allegedly addresses the core claims brought up in the Adobe data breach class action lawsuit concerning the efficacy of Adobe’s security systems. The company has also agreed to a security audit once these new measures are in place.

According to the plaintiffs, they “have achieved the objectives of this lawsuit on behalf of the class such that further litigation would be both unnecessarily risky and wasteful.” It is important to note that the plaintiffs have also asked the court for individual settlements, claiming that this legal action would achieve the same changes in the tech company’s data security practices as a class action settlement ideally would, and Class Members of the data breach litigation would still receive benefits without denying their legal rights against the defendant. Potential Adobe data breach Class Members who bought Adobe cloud subscriptions still retain the right to bring restitution claims against the company.

Although the Adobe data breach class action settlement is technically a moneyless agreement, Adobe has agreed to pay $5,000 service awards to the named plaintiffs in this Adobe class action lawsuit as well as $1.8 million in attorneys’ fees.

This data breach class action lawsuit was originally filed against Adobe in November 2013 by consumers of Adobe products and Creative Cloud subscribers and who gave the company their personal information. They allege that Adobe did not take enough security measures to protect Adobe consumers’ personal info.

In September 2014, Judge Koh questioned some of the plaintiffs’ claims in this Adobe class action lawsuit, but left the suit mostly intact and gave the plaintiffs and their legal counsel leave to amend the claims that were found to be problematic or without grounds.

Finally, in April of this year, Adobe and the plaintiffs reached a data breach settlement agreement for the consolidated Adobe data breach class action lawsuits after some time in mediation.

The plaintiffs are represented by Eric H. Gibbs and David M. Berger of Girard Gibbs LLP.

The Adobe Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Adobe Systems Inc. Privacy Litigation, Case No. 5:13-cv-05226, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.