Mondelez, US law firm must face class action over data breach
By David Thomas
June 4 (Reuters) -Snack food giant Mondelez MDLZ.O and U.S. law firm Bryan Cave Leighton must face at least part of a proposed class action over a data breach at the firm that compromised personal information belonging to thousands of Mondelez employees, a Chicago federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso on Monday dismissed some of the allegations in the case for now, but he refused to throw out the employees' negligence claims against Mondelez and 1,200-lawyer BCLP.
Spokespersons for BCLP and Chicago-headquartered Mondelez, whose snack brands include Oreo and Cadbury, declined to comment. The defendants have denied wrongdoing.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who sued on behalf of a proposed class of 51,100 current and former Mondelez employees, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As an outside law firm for Mondelez, BCLP possessed personal information on its employees including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and addresses, according to the plaintiffs. After hackers gained access to the files in a 2023 breach at the firm, the employees sued both Mondelez and BCLP for failing to safeguard their data.
The judge on Monday kept the plaintiffs' negligence claims alive against both defendants, and he rejected Mondelez's argument that it should not be held responsible for the breach of another company's systems.
"Plaintiffs argue that Mondelez's arguments about breach and proximate cause turn on questions of fact that make a ruling inappropriate at the pleading stage, and the court tends to agree," Alonso wrote in his 21-page ruling.
The judge dismissed other claims, including unjust enrichment and breach of contract claims, against Mondelez and BCLP, though he said the plaintiffs can file an amended complaint by July 3.
One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against BCLP, William Federman, brought a lawsuit against U.S. law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe over a separate March 2023 data breach involving that firm.
Orrick denied any liability or wrongdoing, but the firm has agreed to pay $8 million to settle those class actions. A federal judge in San Francisco granted preliminary approval to the settlement on Friday.
The cases are Michael Shields v. Mondelez Global LLC, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 1:23-cv-03999, and Eric Flores v. Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, et al., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 1:23-cv-04249.
Reporting by David Thomas
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