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Home security company ADT told a federal judge that a class action alleging their wireless security systems are vulnerable to hackers should be dismissed because the plaintiffs can’t adequate represent the diverse claims that could be brought by a Class.
Plaintiff Janet Cheatham alleged in the class action lawsuit that ADT security systems rely on an unencrypted radio signal. This makes affected systems vulnerable to hacking, says the plaintiff, alleging further that ADT did not inform users of that vulnerability.
ADT shot back, arguing that the class action lawsuit cannot possibly represent the diverse claims that could come from security system users.
According to its motion, Cheatham bought a 2013 security system that highlights its vulnerability to jamming in its owner’s manual. ADT contends that security system owners may have varying levels of knowledge about the vulnerability of their systems depending on what they were told and what was contained in their owner’s manual.
“Different customers were subject to different disclosures. Some received manuals warning of the ability to interfere with wireless signals; others did not. Some knew about the potential for hacking of wireless signals from sources other than the disclosures and others did not,” points out ADT in its motion to dismiss the class action.
Additionally, owners may have decided to purchase ADT security systems knowing that they were vulnerable to hacking.
“Given this wide spectrum of disclosures, there can be no uniform answer to the question whether ADT adequately alerted consumers to any purported problem with its wireless security systems,” said ADT in its motion to dismiss. “Answering that question will require manual-by-manual and contract-by-contract adjudication.”
ADT took aim at the plaintiff’s motion to certify the Class based on an argument that her proposed Class of Arizona ADT owners have common claim stating that “rattling off ‘common’ questions does nothing to demonstrate that the class members have suffered the same injury.”
“In reality, these questions are rife with individualized issues that make common answers impossible,” wrote the company in its motion. “And even if Cheatham could show commonality, unavoidable differences among class members preclude any finding that common questions predominate.”
The class action was initiated after a 2014 article in Forbes magazine showed that ADT security systems could be easily accessed and deactivated by relatively inexpensive electronics.
The company contends that hacking and disabling their systems is not as easy as the article made it sounds and pointed out that it took the expertise of a “cybersecurity expert” in a “government lab” to figure out how to hack their system.
“Such interference has not occurred in the real world, and has been a nonissue everywhere but in this litigation,” says the company.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Francis J. Balint Jr., Andrew S. Friedman and William F. King of Bonnett Fairbourn Friedman & Balint PC.
The ADT Wireless Security Vulnerability Class Action Lawsuit is Janet Cheatham v. The ADT Corporation, et al., Case No. 2:15-cv-02137, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.
UPDATE: On Jan. 24, 2017, ADT agreed to settle five separate class action lawsuits filed by consumers who claim the company misled device owners about the vulnerability of their home security systems to hacking.
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UPDATE: On Jan. 24, 2017, ADT agreed to settle five separate class action lawsuits filed by consumers who claim the company misled device owners about the vulnerability of their home security systems to hacking.