Class-Action Plaintiff Opposes Genworth-Backed Transfer in MOVEit MDL
Peter Behrens, plaintiff in the class action against Genworth Financial that's pending in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, submitted an interested party response (docket 3083) Tuesday in partial opposition to plaintiff Bruce Bailey’s motion for centralization and transfer…
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of related actions in MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation (see 2307120053). Behrens opposes Bailey's July motion to transfer based on the notice of related actions filed by Genworth Financial identifying the Behrens action as a case Genworth contends should be transferred to MDL 3083, said the filing before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Behrens is “eligible for transfer,” and transfer is “neither necessary nor appropriate,” it said. Behrens’ complaint alleges Genworth failed to protect his personally identifiable information (PII) from “well-known threats by hackers” in Progress Software Corp.’s (PSC) May data breach. Behrens entrusted Genworth with his PII in order to buy a long-term care insurance policy, and Genworth “failed to protect that data,” said the response. Genworth entrusted Behrens’ data to Pension Benefit Information (PBI), with which Behrens “has no contractual relationship,” and PBI used PSC’s MOVEit file transfer software that contained “a vulnerability" to hackers,” it said. Though several entities are involved in the ultimate exposure of Behrens’ PII, the purpose of his action is “holding Genworth accountable for its failure to safeguard the information entrusted to it by Behrens and a class of 2.5 to 2.7 million similarly situated customers,” it said. Genworth isn't named as a defendant in the "vast majority" of the cases and tagalongs presented by the parties in favor of transfer, which Behrens identified as "unique cases covering unique data breaches including Johns Hopkins patients, California pensioners, Nebraska bank customers, and Louisiana driver’s license holders," in the opposition. “Naturally, Genworth would much prefer that Behrens’s case be transferred and centralized with over 40 other cases that are, as Genworth admits in its response … focused on the liability of entities other than Genworth,” said the opposition. Those are entities that Genworth “expressly blames for its obvious failure to protect 2.5 to 2.7 million Genworth customers’ most sensitive information,” it said: “To transfer Behrens’s case would benefit only Genworth and unnecessarily obscure Behrens’s path to hold Genworth accountable.”