Saks Fifth Avenue Lawsuit Takes Aim at Recent Data Breach

A Saks Fifth Avenue lawsuit claims that the company didn’t do enough to protect its customers’ data, which resulted in the massive data breach that occurred last year.

Plaintiff Latusha V. states that she made a purchase at Saks Fifth Avenue store in San Francisco over the holiday season, for which she used an American Express card. She claims that in January 2018, she reviewed her American Express statement and discovered that $1,300 worth of fraudulent purchases had been made to her account without her number.

She alleges that these purchases were made while her card was in her possession and that she never lost the card. She claims that she then canceled her American Express card, and changed her password and account with American Express in an attempt to protect her information and funds from further fraud. This led her to file a Saks Fifth Avenue lawsuit. 

Latusha’s Saks Fifth Avenue lawsuit claims that the fraudulent purchases were made because her card information had been exposed during Sak’s Fifth Avenue’s data breach of late last year.

She claims that she was financially injured from the fraudulent purchases, and incurred further injury from the time she had to spend to recover her information and protect her funds. She claims that she is at risk of further injury from having her information exposed, because she may be the victim of future fraud.

Latusha argues that Saks Fifth Avenue did not take sufficient measures to secure customers’ information from theft. She states that had she known that Saks Fifth Avenue was not sufficiently diligent in securing its consumers’ information, she would not have used a card to make a payment for her purchase at Saks, or would not have shopped at Saks at all during the period of the data breach. She claims that as a result, the money she spent at Saks during the data breach constitutes an actual injury.

She states that she is among numerous consumers similarly affected by the data breach. As a result, she is suing Saks and its parent company, Hudson’s Bay Company, for damages for herself and similarly affected consumers.

On April 1, 2018, Saks and Hudson’s Bay announced that around 5 million consumers who used cards for payment at Saks had had their information compromised during the data breach. However, Latusha states that the acknowledgment came too late and offered too little information, given that the company only acknowledged the breach after Fin7, aka Joker’s Stash, a well-known hacking syndicate, announced on March 28, 2018, that they were behind the breach. Research firm Gemini Advisory then confirmed that this was the case on March 31, 2018.

Latusha’s Saks Fifth Avenue lawsuit argues that Saks should have done more to protect its consumerism from a data breach, and argues that the company’s security systems were ineffective and insufficient. Allegedly, the malware used by Fin7 remained in Saks’ system for months without being detected.

The Saks Fifth Avenue Lawsuit is Case No. 1:18-cv-03366, in the U.S. District Court for the rather District of New York.

Join a Free Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

Consumers affected by the 2017 Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks OFF Fifth, and Lord & Taylor data breach incidents may qualify to join a free data breach class action lawsuit investigation. A data breach lawsuit could help you or a loved one recover compensation for stolen credit card information and the threat of identity theft.

Learn More