Plaintiff Seeks Briefing in MOVEit MDL on Remand Request for Transfer to N.J. Court
Plaintiff Susan Allcock requested that U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs for Massachusetts in Boston schedule a briefing to address her remand motion related to a class action vs. Valley National Bank involving the MOVEit file transfer software data breach, her…
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counsel, Andrew Milz, said in a Tuesday letter (docket 3083) to the court. Allcock opposes inclusion of her negligence class action against Valley National Bank in conditional transfer order 9 (CTO-9), transferring her case to In re: MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation. Scott Christie, counsel for Valley National Bank, said in a Nov. 22 letter before the court that Milz plans to raise a motion before the court to remand Allcock’s case to New Jersey state court solely on the basis that the jurisdictional amount in controversy does not exceed $5 million, exclusive of interest and costs. Christie noted that two other complaints of named class members, purporting to represent the same nationwide class as Allcock, made representative admissions that the amount in controversy does exceed $5 million. Christie also said Alcock failed to object to the transfer of her case from the District of New Jersey to the MDL despite a pending remand motion in the District of New Jersey that has been “rendered moot" by virtue of MDL Order No. 1. Under those circumstances, "Valley Bank believes that it would be inappropriate for Ms. Allcock to pursue a motion to remand in the MDL before the court" as the motion may unnecessarily “complicate these proceedings.” Allcock's case, removed Oct. 4 from Middlesex County Superior Court in New Jersey to the U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark, asserts she and class members are entitled to a “significant amount of monetary damages” related to “actual identity theft” from the compromise of her personally identifiable information in the late May data breach of Progress Software Corp.'s (PSC) MOVEit file transfer software. Her action, which doesn't name PSC as a defendant, claims Valley Bank “failed to implement reasonable data security measures” to protect her PII. Valley Bank’s failure to protect customers’ information “ultimately allowed nefarious third-party hackers to breach the systems housing PII,” alleges her complaint.