Wawa Class Action Says Workers Fired After Breach

A class action lawsuit has been lodged against Wawa Inc. by a former employee who claims that the convenience store chain fired him in the wake of a cybersecurity attack.

Plaintiff Shawn McGlade states that he was employed by Wawa in 2019 as a General Manager and had been in that position since March 2017.

He claims that he was hired five years ago and worked his way up to becoming a General Manager.

McGlade states that he was a “model employee” of the company for more than five years and managed numerous Wawa stores in Pennsylvania during the course of his employment. He claims that he was abruptly fired after his and many other individuals personal identifying information was accessed and taken without their knowledge.

The plaintiff argues that he was fired in a “sheepish effort” by the company to show that they were invested in dealing with the cybersecurity issues.

He claims that he became a “scapegoat” as the company tried to stop the public relations “nightmare” that came after the data breach.

The Wawa class action lawsuit states that instead of trying to find the cyber criminals, Wawa “chooses to police only its employees, treating them like criminals in a military state if they fail to follow Wawa’s unwritten, but illegal, policies and procedures.”

The plaintiff claims that, as a part of his employment, McGlade had to give Wawa his confidential personal identifying information. The information required by the company allegedly includes his name, his wife’s name, the names of his children, and his Social Security number as a condition of his employment with the company.

The Wawa class action lawsuit states that the plaintiff’s information was subsequently compromised in a data breach.

Allegedly, the McGlade family has been suffering since early last year as they are dealing with the fallout of the cybersecurity breach, trying to reverse wrongful charges that have been placed on new accounts that were opened up in Shawn McGlade’s name.

The plaintiff states that Wawa chose to have “antiquated information technology systems,” which exposed its employees’ personal identifying information. The Wawa class action lawsuit states that Wawa did this in order to save millions of dollars it would have had to spend in order to have a modern cybersecurity software.

“The McGlades are the much-needed ‘whistleblowers’ in this fight against Wawa to expose its wrongdoing, beyond what Wawa has admitted publicly to date,” the Wawa class action lawsuit states.

Other class action lawsuits have been filed by Wawa customers who claim that the company did not do enough to secure their personal identifying information in the data breach.  

The Wawa class action lawsuit argues that Wawa has “deceived the McGlades and the members of the Wawa Employee Class in order to induce them to sleep on their rights and not take appropriate measures to protect themselves and their families.”

Potential Class Members include: “All current and former employees of Wawa, and their spouses in Pennsylvania and other states in which they reside, who, during the period beginning in at least March 2019 and continuing through the present had their PII accessed, disseminated and/or used by unauthorized users as a result of the breach of Wawa’s computer systems.”

Do you work at Wawa? Leave a message in the comments section below.

The plaintiffs are represented by Donald Haviland Jr. of Haviland Hughes.

The Wawa Employee Class Action Lawsuit is McGlade, et al. v. Wawa Inc., et al., Case No. unavailable, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Read More Lawsuit & Settlement News:

Does Regions Bank Do FHA Loans?

Cobra Sexual Energy Class Action Gets Recertified