Excellus Hit With Another Class Action Over Data Breach

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 New York resident filed a putative class action lawsuit against Excellus BlueCross BlueShield and Lifetime Healthcare Inc., accusing the companies of wrongfully disclosing sensitive personal information due to their failure to take necessary precautions to safeguard consumer data.

Plaintiff Katie Fuller filed the class action lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in New York following a data breach that reportedly affected more than 10 million customers. This data breach class action lawsuit is the latest of a series that have been filed against the companies.

Fuller maintains that Excellus should have taken note of cyberattacks on other BlueCross BlueShield affiliates to better prepare against an unwanted data security situation.

Fuller explains in the data breach class action lawsuit, “Despite these clear warnings, Excellus failed to take necessary steps to secure and protect the personal information of its customers, or even to detect the data breach until approximately 20 months after it began.”

In October or November 2015, Fuller says she received letters from Excellus notifying her that her personal information as well as the information of her three children had been compromised and exposed to thieves, according to the claim.

The Excellus data breach lawsuit states, “As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ wrongful actions, inaction and omissions, and the resulting data breach, Class members have suffered and will continue to suffer economic damages, including inter alia the costs of monitoring their credit, monitoring their financial accounts, and mitigating their damages, and they face an immediate and substantial risk of identity theft and fraud, as well as damage to their credit score.”

Fuller claims that following the data breach, she is forced to live with the looming threat of criminals possibly using her data for the foreseeable future, and that experts have valued the personal information lost in the Excellus breach of up to $1,000 per person.

At the time Excellus publicly disclosed that a data breach had occurred, the company estimated that the data intrusion started around December 2013. Hackers reportedly had access to names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and personal financial information as part of the data breach.

Excellus has offered customers two years of credit monitoring and identity protection services for free, but Fuller does not feel that this is enough to make up for what occurred. “At best, the credit monitoring service offered by defendants may reveal new credit accounts opened with compromised information, but it does nothing to prevent unauthorized charges made to existing accounts,” the Excellus data breach class action lawsuit reads.

Fuller brings forth the action on behalf of herself and other consumers and asserts claims for negligence, negligence per se, breach of implied contract, bailment, conversion, unjust enrichment, and violations of New York Federal Business Law.

The class action lawsuit claims that Excellus is one of many other data breach situations experienced by other BlueCross Blue Shield companies including Anthem Inc., CareFirst and Premera. Anthem’s breach announced in February was said to have affected 80 million consumers.

Fuller’s data breach lawsuit is now part of a group of at least five potential class action lawsuits that have been filed in New York’s Western District that accuse Excellus of negligence, breach of contract and HIPAA violations.

Fuller is represented by John Barry Licata of Dolce Panepinto PC.

The Excellus Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Fuller v. Lifetime Healthcare Inc., et al., Case No. 6:15-cv-06739, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.