Christina Spicer  |  October 11, 2016

Category: Labor & Employment

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sprouts class action lawsuitA group of class action lawsuits alleging that Sprouts, a natural foods store chain, released W-2 information about its employees as part of a phishing scam were consolidated by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

According to the class actions, a Sprouts payroll employee received an email believed to be from a senior executive of the company allegedly asking for the 2015 W-2 statements from all company employees.

The payroll employee allegedly compiled the requested information and reportedly sent it off in an email before the company realized that the email was actually a phishing scam.

According to the class actions, 21,000 employees’ W-2s from 2015 were released to an unknown party.

The complaints allege that Sprouts exposed workers to potential identity theft and compromised their personal information.

Three class actions were filed in California and fourth in Arizona after the alleged data breach.

The JPML determined that Arizona would be the most convenient state to hear the consolidated class action since Sprouts’ corporate office is located in Phoenix.

“Sprouts is headquartered in this district, and the witnesses and documents relevant to the facts of this litigation are located there,” said the panel in their decision. Sprouts also supported hearing the case in Arizona.

According to a class action lawsuit filed by plaintiff Julio Hernandez, Sprouts employees’ “private tax information and Social Security numbers were compromised, placing them at an increased risk of fraud and identity theft and causing direct financial expenses associated with credit-monitoring, replacement of compromised credit, debit and bank card numbers, and other measures needed to protect against the misuse of their private tax information.”

Sprouts offered its employees one year of credit monitoring, but the plaintiffs claimed that this won’t be enough to protect them from identity theft.

Hernandez alleged that he had to pay for identity theft protection, since credit monitoring by itself is allegedly inadequate given the circumstances.

Sprouts is a natural foods grocery store with 220 locations around the country.

The class action plaintiffs allege that Sprouts did not provide adequate measures to secure employees’ private information and the data breach was a result of negligence.

The plaintiffs further claim that Sprouts should have maintained a system that would recognize phishing scams like the one that exposed 21,000 employees’ W-2 forms.

Plaintiff Debra Price is represented by David H. Miller and Heather E. Joyce of the Sawaya Law Firm. Beverly Porras is represented by Samuel Wong, Kashif Haque and Jessica Campbell of Aegis Law Firm PC. Hernandez is represented by Scott B. Cooper and Samantha A. Smith of The Cooper Law Firm, Roger R. Carter of The Carter Law Firm, and Marc H. Phelps of the Phelps Law Group. Nancy Castellano is represented by Nicole R. Roysdon and Graham S.P. Hollis of GrahamHollis APC.

The Sprouts Data Breach Consolidated Class Action Lawsuits are In re: Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. Employee Data Security Breach Litigation, Case No. 2731, in the U.S. Judicial Panel On Multidistrict Litigation.

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