Sony Corporation has had a tough few weeks in regards to customer account security. The first alleged breach caused Sony’s Qriocity streaming media and PlayStation Network (PSN) services to go down and the loss of 77 million customer records. A devastating blow in and of itself that has apparently gotten worse. More recently, a second case occurred where Sony Online Entertainment allegedly lost 24 million additional customer records. Combined, the two intrusions may have affected 10 million customers’ credit and debit cards. The result has been some serious privacy concerns for the company, outrage from customers affected and what has followed are some potentially massive class action lawsuits. Legally, a class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a sizable group of people collectively brings a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. Class action lawsuits may be brought in federal court if the claim arises under federal law. The federal district courts have original jurisdiction over any civil action where the amount in controversy exceeds $5,000,000 and either 1. any member of a class of plaintiffs is a citizen of a State different from any defendant; 2. any member of a class of plaintiffs is a foreign state or a citizen or subject of a foreign state and any defendant is a citizen of a State; or 3. any member of a class of plaintiffs is a citizen of a State and any defendant is a foreign state or a citizen or subject of a foreign state. While lawsuits of this kind usually involve product liability class action lawsuits or personal injury class action lawsuits, developments like this are not unheard of. The first federal class action lawsuit addressing the recent Sony security breach has been drawn up and submitted to the Northern District Court of California. The complaint, filed by a law firm, similar to Ledger & Associates, represents 36-year-old Alabama resident Kristopher Johns (as well as every other affected PSN user), accuses Sony of “failure to maintain adequate computer data security of consumer personal data and financial data,” and of failing to take “reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure the private and sensitive data of its users.” Legally, the law firm will gather all of the defendants and represent them as one class in one action, instead of filing 1000’s of individual suits, it mostly gets taken care of in one large legal action. This may also occur if, say, one person like Mr. Johns has been negligently injured due to a product failure. In this example, the negligently injured party would come forward and the legal teams would seek out other victims of the same negligence to create the class of plaintiffs. Then, the law firm would file the product negligence suit on their behalf.
