Buca Di Beppo Class Action: 2M Credit Cards Exposed in Data Breach

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A New York couple has filed a class action lawsuit against Earl Enterprises Holdings Inc., saying that the company didn’t do enough to protect customers from a data breach at Buca di Beppo, Planet Hollywood, and Earl of Sandwich, three of the company’s chain restaurants.

Saul Hymes and Ilana Harwayne-Gidansky claim that their credit card information was exposed in a data breach affecting more than 2 million consumers, primarily at Buca di Beppo restaurants.

They say that on Feb. 17, 2019, they ate at one of the affected restaurants, a Buca di Peppo in San Diego.

The Buca di Beppo class action claims the couple canceled their credit card upon learning about the Earl Enterprises’ data breach, and are waiting for a replacement card.

They say that they were injured by the data breach because they cannot use their card, and cannot accumulate rewards points on the card.

The Buca di Beppo data breach class action also claims the couple was inconvenienced because they had to spend time and effort attempting to protect their identity, and had to transfer automatic payments to a new card.

The couple is seeking damages on behalf of themselves and all other similarly affected consumers.

According to the couple, the data breach could have been prevented. They claim that Earl Enterprises did not do enough to secure customers information, which left information available to theft by hackers.

Allegedly, the data breach took place over the course of almost a year, and during the breach, more than 2 million credit numbers may have been compromised.

The Buca di Beppo data breach class action lawsuit exposed information related to transactions between May 23, 2018 and March 18, 2019.

The company announced on March 29, 2109 that it had become aware of an incident compromising credit card information of its consumers. The couple claims that the company did not let the public know of the full extent of the data breach.

To support their claim that Earl Enterprises did not disclose the full extent of the security reach, the couple cite a blog post that asserts that credit card numbers from Earl Enterprises were for sale on the dark web since Feb. 20, 2019, which put consumers at significant risk for identity theft and financial injury.

Hymes and Harwayne-Gidansky argue that “data breaches at other restaurant chain and retail establishments in the past few years have been the result of malware installed on point-of-sale-systems. While many retailers, restaurant chain and other companies have responded to data breaches by adopting technology that helps make transactions more secure, [Earl Enterprises] did not.”

The couple argues that Earl Enterprises should have learned from the recent increase in data breaches and taken preventive steps to protect their customers’ information, but failed to do so.

Additionally, the couple argues that the company did not detect the data breach until 10 months after it initially occurred.

Hymes and Harwayne-Gidansky are represented by John A. Yanchunis and Ryan J. McGee of Morgan & Morgan and Matthew M. Guiney and Carl Malmstrom of Wolf Haldenstein Alder Freeman & Herz LLP.

The Buca di Beppo Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Hymes, et al. v. Earl Enterprises Holdings Inc., Case No. 6:19-cv-00644, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.