Data Breach Plaintiffs, Defendant ABA Spar Over ABA's Motion to Dismiss
Despite the opportunity to amend their original complaint against the American Bar Association for a March 17 data breach that exposed the records of 1.4 million ABA members, plaintiffs Tiffany Troy and Eric Mata still don’t and can’t “plead facts…
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supporting the basic elements of their claims,” said the ABA’s memorandum of law Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-03053) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn in support of its motion to dismiss. The court should dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice under Rule 12(b)(6) because the plaintiffs’ allegations “are fatally deficient and implausible,” said the memorandum. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit depends on the “implausible assertion” that the data breach compromised their personal and financial data and exposed them to a heightened risk of identity theft, it said. But the ABA’s April notice makes clear that the breach didn’t expose “that kind of information," it said. The plaintiffs also don’t establish how the breach “would have caused the implausible damages they allege,” it said. Plaintiffs Troy and Mata immediately answered with a memorandum of law in opposition to the motion to dismiss, in which they argued that they entered into an "implied contract" with the association as dues-paying ABA members and as customers of merchandise on the ABA's online store. They allege the ABA breached that contract by failing to implement policies to secure their personal information, said the memorandum. They further allege that the ABA's disseminated April notice “misrepresented and downplayed the extent of the data breach or of the ancillary harms that could flow from the disclosure of the data,” it said. To the extent that the plaintiffs’ amended complaint is dismissed, that dismissal shouldn’t be with prejudice, and the plaintiffs “should be permitted another opportunity to amend,” it said.