Public Justice’s 2022 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award celebrates and recognizes the accomplishments of an attorney or team of attorneys working on behalf of individuals and groups that have suffered grave injustice or abuse. Cohen Milstein had the honor of being named a “finalist” for this prestigious plaintiffs bar award for the firm’s work in In re Flint Water Cases.
Watch the video about the litigation. Read more about about the case below.
In this consolidated class action and individual personal injury cases, the legal team worked for more than five years to expose the state of Michigan and its government employees’ role in the Flint Water Crisis, which harmed more than 90,000 residents in Flint — a historically Black and economically depressed community. This case highlights the important role of the justice system in holding government officials and corporate entities accountable and affirming they’re not immune to liability.
Historically, the city of Flint purchased safe drinking water from Detroit. However, in April of 2014, the Flint municipal government, along with state officials, including Governor Snyder, and two water engineering firms under state management, devised a plan to re-direct toxic levels of contaminated water from the Flint River into the city’s drinking water in an effort to save money, despite studies indicating that the Flint Water Treatment Plant was unable to safely treat the water for drinking. Meanwhile, the state directed superior water through the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to more affluent, white communities throughout Genesee County.
Because of this switch, more than 90,000 residents and businesses in Flint received highly toxic, lead-tainted water with concentrations of up to 880 times the EPA’s legal limit, causing the corrosion of pipes, life-threatening illnesses, and serious, long-term developmental conditions in children. Despite residents’ complaints about the water’s bad smell, color, and taste—and the July 2014 outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, which killed 12 people—state officials and the engineers failed to identify corroding water pipes as part of the cause, and instead made the problem worse by recommending that the city double the dose of ferric chloride. This highly acidic chemical compounded the corrosion problem, leading directly to the lead poisoning of Flint’s children and rendering real estate worthless.
After more than a year in which Flint residents were forced to endure the contaminated water, Governor Snyder declared a state of emergency after directing Flint to reconnect to DWSD. By January 5, 2016, President Barack Obama declared a federal state of emergency.
On March 31, 2016, a group of Flint residents filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan under the Clean Water Act against the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, and various city and state employees, including former Governor Rick Snyder. An amended complaint was filed on September 29, 2017, consolidating more than a dozen class and individual lawsuits and expanding the residents’ claims to include state and federal constitutional and civil rights violations and injuries caused by the Michigan government and employees involved, including denial of due process based on the bodily integrity doctrine and equal protection due to race and economic discrimination.
In August of 2018, the district court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, allowing litigation to move forward against the engineering companies, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) officials, and high-ranking state officials in Governor Snyder’s administration, while granting the motion to dismiss against Governor Snyder, with leave for plaintiffs to amend the complaint. On October 5, 2018, the legal team filed an amended complaint, arguing that Governor Snyder and his staff were fully aware of the mounting health issues, including the risks of legionella, and were even briefed on the city’s discovery of fecal coliform bacteria and pipe corrosion, which caused the problem in the summer of 2014. This also included MDEQ’s failure to investigate these claims or notify the public, lying to the EPA, discrediting outside toxicology analysis, and refusing DWSD’s offer to return Flint to Lake Huron water in January 2015.
On April 1, 2019, the district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to amend its fourth complaint against Governor Snyder, allowing claims against the former Michigan governor for violating Flint citizens’ “right to bodily integrity.” Additionally, the district court allowed plaintiffs to amend class definitions to include an African-American subclass and smaller subclasses based on property damage, personal injury, injunctive relief, and a set of common issues relating to liability and causation. In August of 2019, the court allowed the citizens to appoint independent counsel to advocate for each subclass. Following the district court’s decision, Governor Snyder filed multiple appeals with the Sixth Circuit, only to be denied each time.
On August 20, 2020, the state announced a preliminary settlement of $600 million. On November 10, 2021, the district court granted final approval of the settlement after more than five years of litigation and 18 months of court-supervised negotiations and a detailed victim claims process. Due to the novel class strategy granted by the district court, the plaintiffs were able to more effectively analyze and calculate settlement terms — a vital component to assessing fair financial awards given the enormity of the class and claims, and the passage of time since the initial contamination in 2014.
Flint residents can now receive long-awaited financial relief, 80 percent of which will go to individuals who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crisis, with a large majority of that money going to children aged six and younger. The remaining funds will go to special education services in Genesee County, as well as to adults, business and property owners impacted by the water crisis.
While this litigation has concluded, litigation against the national engineering firms, both charged with professional negligence, continues, as well as separate litigation against the EPA. In the fall of 2021, United States District Judge Judith Levy, certified the professional negligence case against the two private engineering firms. The class certification matter is pending trial.
While this doesn’t undo the contaminated water’s long-lasting effects on the residents exposed to the lead poisoning, this landmark settlement represents a long overdue measure of justice, affirming basic human rights to clean water and a safe environment.
TEAM: Theodore J. Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; Michael L. Pitt of Pitt, McGehee, Palmer, Bonanni & Rivers, P.C. in Royal Oak, Mich.; Emmy L. Levens, Jessica Weiner, and Leslie M. Kroeger of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC; Cary S. McGehee, Beth M. Rivers, and Channing Robinson-Holmes of Pitt, McGehee, Palmer, Bonanni & Rivers, P.C. in Royal Oak, Mich.; Shawn Raymond, Stephen Morrissey, Jordan Connors, and Katherine Peaslee of Susman Godfrey LLP in Seattle, Wash.; William H. Goodman, Julie H. Hurwitz and Kathryn Bruner James of Goodman Hurwitz & James in Detroit, Mich.; Bradford M. Berry of NAACP in Baltimore, Md.; Deborah A. LaBelle of Deborah LaBelle Law Offices in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Paul Novak and Gregory Stamatopoulos of Weitz & Luxenberg in Detroit, Mich.; Cynthia M. Lindsey and Shermane T. Sealey of Cynthia M. Lindsey & Associates, PLLC in Detroit, Mich.; Trachelle C. Young of Trachelle C Young & Associates in Flint, Mich.; Neal H. Weinfield of Dedendum Group LLC in Highland Park, Ill.; Peretz Bronstein of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC in New York, NY; Esther Berezofsky of Motley Rice LLC in Cherry Hill, NJ; Teresa A. Bingman of The Law Offices of Teresa A. Bingman in Lansing, Mich.
An Illinois federal judge on Friday certified classes of direct purchasers, indirect purchasers and end-user consumers in a sprawling antitrust lawsuit alleging more than a dozen major broiler chicken producers, including Sanderson Farms Inc. and Perdue Foods, conspired to limit chicken production to boost prices.
In a 55-page order, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin certified the classes and refused to exclude multiple expert opinions supporting the certification requests. In his reasoning, the judge noted that the experts’ evidence shows broiler chicken production rate increased steadily for years, but dropped in 2009 and 2012.
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The end user consumer plaintiffs are represented by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Federal Lawsuit Alleges SafeRent Solutions Violated the Fair Housing Act, State Law by Discriminating Against Black and Hispanic Voucher Holders in Tenant Screenings
SafeRent Employs Algorithm That Assigns Disproportionately Lower “SafeRent Scores” to Black and Hispanic Applicants
BOSTON– A lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against SafeRent Solutions, LLC alleges that the national tenant screening provider has been violating the Fair Housing Act and related state laws for years. SafeRent, formerly known as CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions, provides tenant screening services that disproportionately give low scores to Black and Hispanic rental applicants who use federally funded housing vouchers to pay the vast majority of their rent, causing them to be denied housing. The lawsuit alleges that SafeRent’s algorithm has a disparate impact based on race and source of income, in violation of federal and state laws.
“As stated in the complaint, while SafeRent considers applicants’ credit history, including credit-related information, including non-tenancy debts, and eviction history in calculating SafeRent Scores,” said Todd Kaplan, Senior Attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, “SafeRent’s algorithm does not consider the financial benefits of housing vouchers in assigning SafeRent Scores. On average over 73% of the monthly rental payment is paid through these vouchers.”
SafeRent assigns disproportionately lower SafeRent Scores to Black and Hispanic rental applicants compared to white rental applicants, which is due in part to SafeRent’s use of credit history, which includes non-tenancy debts. SafeRent Scores are designed, marketed, and used to screen prospective tenants for rental housing. These Scores cause Black and Hispanic rental applicants to be disproportionately denied housing. These Scores cannot be justified as a necessary business practice for evaluating applicants with housing assistance vouchers, since a tenant’s voucher ensures the rent is affordable and uniquely protects their housing provider’s receipt of monthly rent.
“Credit scores and conventional credit history are not accurate predictors of a successful tenancy. However, reliance on such data in scoring potential tenants has a disproportionately adverse impact on Black and Hispanic tenants, and those who use housing vouchers,” said Christine E. Webber, Co-Chair of Cohen Milstein’s Civil Rights & Employment practice. “Moreover, as cited in the complaint, SafeRent Score algorithm does not disclose all of the data it considers, or how this data is weighted in score modeling, thereby keeping its inner workings hidden. This means that housing providers cannot exercise any independent judgment as to the merits of housing applicants and can only accept SafeRent calculations.”
As a tenant screening provider, SafeRent provides landlords and property owners a SafeRent Score. The Score cannot be adjusted by the landlord nor can a variable like a housing voucher be weighted in the Score, yet the Score is used to decide if an applicant will be accepted. SafeRent’s algorithm does not consider the financial benefits of housing vouchers in assigning Scores. Specifically, when a housing voucher is used, on average over 73% of the monthly rental payment is paid by public housing authorities directly to housing providers.
According to a 2022 study conducted by the Urban Institute, as of October 2021, Black consumers have a median credit score of 612 and Hispanic consumers have a median credit score of 661, as compared to white consumers’ median credit score of 725, leading to unfair bias in accepting an applicant’s lease application.
“Racial disparities in credit history and credit scores not only reflect historical racial disparities in wealth, but also perpetuate wealth inequalities through reduced financial opportunities and fewer financial safety nets, which hinder a consumer’s ability to accumulate present or intergenerational wealth through homeownership or other financial investments,” said Ariel Nelson, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
For example, in May 2021, Plaintiff Mary Louis, a 54-year-old Black woman who resides in Malden, Mass., applied for an apartment at Granada Highlands (recently renamed “Altitude Apartments”) and was denied solely because of her SafeRent Score, which was calculated using her non-tenancy related debt and did not take into account her housing voucher which would have covered nearly 70% of her rent.
“As a nonprofit that works directly with lower income renters who have housing vouchers, we help locate, apply for, and secure appropriate homes for hundreds of families a year,” said David Gibbs, Executive Director of the Community Action Agency of Somerville. “We are bringing these claims against SafeRent because its actions interfere with our ability to stabilize low-income families in housing with their vouchers. The tenant screening software makes it almost impossible for us to place families in many developments because these otherwise qualifying applicants often have non-tenant consumer debt. This is especially frustrating because our clients always prioritize paying their rent to keep a roof over their heads.”
Plaintiffs Mary Louis, Monica Douglas, and Community Action Agency of Somerville, Inc., are represented by Greater Boston Legal Services, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and the National Consumer Law Center.
This is the second AI-racial discrimination lawsuit Cohen Milstein has brought against SafeRent Solutions, which previously operated as CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions. Cohen Milstein is currently litigating, as a bench trial, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, et al. v. CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions, Case No. 3:18-cv-00705 (D. Conn.), in partnership with Connecticut Fair Housing Center and the National Housing Law Project.
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About Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC is a national leader in plaintiff-side personal injury and class action litigation. As one of the premier law firms in the country handling major complex lawsuits, Cohen Milstein, with more than 10090 attorneys, has offices in Washington, DC; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Palm Beach Gardens, FL; and Raleigh, NC.
About Greater Boston Legal Services
Greater Boston Legal Services annually helps more than 11,000 low-income families and individuals living in poverty to solve their civil (non-criminal) legal problems. Our clients include tenants in no-fault evictions, homeless families, homeowners facing foreclosure, survivors of domestic violence, elders, people with disabilities, low-wage workers, families with no source of income, and immigrants facing persecution. We represent our clients in court, at appeals, in hearings before administrative law judges, and with advice and paperwork, both as individuals and through partnerships with community organizations. We have a special focus on “impact litigation.” GBLS provides legal counsel to dozens of community-based groups and organizations and conducts strategic impact advocacy to bring about positive systematic change throughout the region and state. For more information, please visit www.gbls.org or contact: 617-371-1234.
About National Consumer Law Center
Since 1969, the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center® (NCLC®) has used its expertise in consumer law and energy policy to work for consumer justice and economic security for low-income and other disadvantaged people, including older adults, in the United States. NCLC’s expertise includes policy analysis and advocacy; consumer law and energy publications; litigation; expert witness services, and training and advice for advocates. NCLC works with nonprofit and legal services organizations, private attorneys, policymakers, and federal and state government and courts across the nation to stop exploitive practices, help financially stressed families build and retain wealth, and advance economic fairness.
Two Massachusetts women and a fair housing organization on Wednesday accused a tenant screening company of racial discrimination in violation of the Fair Housing Act, saying its scoring tool disproportionately denies housing to Black and Hispanic renters.
Tenants Mary Louis of Malden and Monica Douglas of Canton, along with the Community Action Agency of Somerville, filed a proposed class action in Massachusetts federal court targeting SafeRent Solutions LLC. The Texas-based company has “effectively blackballed” certain low-income, minority renters, according to the suit.
SafeRent Solutions’ algorithmic SafeRent Score is based “in significant part” on prospective renters’ credit history and score, the plaintiffs claimed. This history includes debts that are not related to prior tenancies, and allegedly results in disproportionately lower scores and housing denials for Black and Hispanic renters.
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SafeRent Solutions was already facing Fair Housing Act claims prior to Wednesday’s complaint. A federal trial expected to resume this fall in Connecticut is focused on the company’s algorithmic CrimSAFE product, which pulls criminal records.
In that suit, filed in 2018, plaintiffs argue that CrimSAFE can disqualify a renter simply based on the existence of a charge or conviction, disproportionately denying housing to Black and Hispanic renters.
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in both cases, which allege that SafeRent Solutions is a key decision-maker for its clients, assessing prospective renters through an opaque process.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Todd S. Kaplan and Nadine Cohen of Greater Boston Legal Services, Christine E. Webber and Samantha N. Gerleman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Stuart T. Rossman, Charles M. Delbaum and Ariel C. Nelson of the National Consumer Law Center.
A former barbecue chain worker hit Argent Trust Co. with a proposed class action in New York federal court Friday, accusing it of violating federal benefits law and costing workers millions in retirement savings by letting them pay too much for their employer’s stock.
Jamaal Lloyd filed the lawsuit against the Atlanta-based wealth management company and several of the chain’s shareholders on behalf of the W BBQ Holdings Inc. Employee Stock Ownership Plan and a proposed class of 1,459 employees. Lloyd said Argent and WBBQ shareholders ran afoul of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act when it facilitated the sale of company stock by $6 million less than it was worth, which hurt participants’ pockets as the value further depreciated over time.
“Argent and the seller defendants did not give adequate consideration to these and other factors in determining the sale price for the company,” Lloyd said in his complaint. “To the contrary, the seller defendants were focused on promoting the company’s value for their own financial benefit, and Argent did not properly account for their conflicts of interest and failed to conduct a rigorous independent examination of the transaction and the price paid by the ESOP.”
Lloyd worked for WBBQ, a New York City barbecue restaurant chain, from 2013 until 2020, during which he was a participant in the ESOP. When he left the company, he was 60% vested in WBBQ shares, according to the complaint.
The ESOP, which is protected by ERISA, takes employer contributions made on behalf of the employees and invests them into company stock.
In July 2016, WBBQ shareholders sold the ESOP 400,000 shares of WBBQ common stock for nearly $99 million, over $6 million more than the originally negotiated purchase price for the same number of shares, Lloyd said. The aggregate price of the value of the shares only totaled nearly $28.9 million by the end of 2016, less than 30% of the purchase price, according to the complaint.
From 2017 through 2020, the shares continued to decrease in value, and as of December 2020 — the last year for which reported data is available — the shares were worth more than $11.2 million, according to the complaint.
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Lloyd is represented by Michael Eisenkraft of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team is finally on equal footing with their male counterparts thanks to landmark new collective bargaining agreements announced Wednesday that experts say provide a framework for other similarly structured organizations to even out pay disparities.
The deals, which run through 2028, are critical to resolving a $24 million equal pay suit that the women and U.S. Soccer Federation had settled in February pending the approval of a new CBA.
Under the labor agreements, the teams will share FIFA World Cup prize money and collect equal appearance fees, game bonuses, and shares of commercial revenue — despite international governing body FIFA’s practice of awarding larger prizes in men’s contests.
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“I saw somebody comment on the men’s team being willing to share their FIFA bonus with the women, but you’ve got to acknowledge that, historically, the women have been doing particularly well,” Christine E. Webber, co-chair of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC’s civil rights and employment group, told Law360. “There are going to be some years where the women do so well — and the men don’t — that they will have bonus money they share with men, even though FIFA prize money is smaller for women.”
The U.S. men’s team has never won a World Cup in the contest’s more than 90 years. The women’s team has taken the title four times since their cup’s inception in 1991 — including the last two held in 2019 and 2015.
They stand a better chance of bringing home a big prize, while the men are at least guaranteed relatively sizable bonuses for qualifying this year and for hosting in 2026, Webber and Bank said.
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Regardless, the deals provide a blueprint for achieving equal pay at other federations that are organized like U.S. Soccer.
“It’s very exciting and unique as far as I’ve seen in sports,” Webber said. “It really sets a model for any other instance where we have a single national federation like national soccer that fields both men’s and women’s teams. The real remaining barrier is what FIFA itself is doing as an organization.”
Since at least 2016, Ohio pharmacists have been accusing large companies acting as pharmacy middlemen of abusive practices, which they deny. And since 2019, the state has been accusing them as well, in the form of lawsuits.
Now, after years of wrangling in court, some of that litigation might be headed to trial.
The middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, operate behind the scenes, but they’re part of some of the largest corporations in the United States. And the big three, which handle prescription transactions for more than 70% of covered Americans, are part of companies that also own major insurers.
Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, negotiate rebates from drugmakers, in part by controlling which drugs are covered by insurance and at what level. They contract with networks of pharmacies and decide how much to pay them for the prescriptions they dispense.
In 2016, two of the big-three PBMs — CVS Caremark and OptumRx — were working for Ohio’s five Medicaid managed-care companies. Late that year, many Ohio pharmacists complained, the companies slashed their reimbursements and then CVS — which was also their biggest retail competitor — offered to buy them out.
CVS and OptumRx insist their reimbursements have been fair and that their actions have saved money for consumers and taxpayers. But amid a newspaper investigation and one by then-Auditor Dave Yost, the Ohio Department of Medicaid in 2018 commissioned an investigation that showed that in 2017, CVS and OptumRx charged taxpayers $244 million more for Medicaid drugs than they paid the pharmacies that dispensed them.
Click through to read: “After Years, Pharmacy-Middleman Suit Might Finally Come to Trial,” Ohio Capital Journal
Cohen Milstein is Special Counsel to the State of Ohio in these cases.
A group of home care workers suing a Medicaid-funded corporation over allegedly unpaid overtime won class certification after a Pennsylvania federal judge rejected the company’s argument that no evidence could point to it being the aides’ employer.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl disagreed with Public Partnerships LLC’s argument that there was no common evidence proving that each caregiver was its employee, pointing out that the company used a standard application for all its workers, set work rules, and maintained employee timesheets and other employee records like tax filings and payroll checks.
“All these materials, policies and practices apply uniformly to all proposed class members and are common evidence of the claim that PPL is a joint employer,” Judge Schmehl said Wednesday, referring to the caregivers as “direct care workers” or DCWs. “PPL has presented no evidence that it does not treat all DCWs uniformly.”
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Talarico and the class members are represented by Christine E. Webber of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Richard Katz of Arnold Beyer & Katz and Rachhana T. Srey and Caroline Bressman of Nichols Kaster PLLP.
The question of whether employers can short-circuit Employee Retirement Income Security Act class actions by tucking requirements that workers individually arbitrate their claims into plan documents is likely bound for the U.S. Supreme Court, benefits attorneys say.
The Seventh Circuit put a spotlight on this issue in September, when it declared arbitration agreements barring class claims were unenforceable because they limited rights to planwide relief under ERISA.
The court’s decision, which involved a company called Triad Manufacturing, contrasts with a 2019 decision out of the Ninth Circuit that allowed Charles Schwab to bar class claims based on arbitration language added to ERISA plan documents.
An ERISA case against Argent Trust Co., currently on appeal to the Second Circuit, hinges on a district court’s denial of Argent’s motion to kick a proposed class action into arbitration. Workers in that suit allege they were overcharged for company stock.
The Tenth Circuit also has a chance to mull a trial court’s denial of a motion to compel arbitration of ERISA claims involving an employee stock ownership plan, in a case involving a company called Envision Management.
Michelle Yau, chair of the benefits practice group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, represents the plaintiffs in the Envision case. She said she’s keeping an eye on a similar case against Wilmington Trust at the Third Circuit.
“The area of arbitration and class action waivers has been so active,” Yau said.
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The Seventh Circuit’s 2021 Triad decision was particularly important because it followed the Schwab ruling. The Triad opinion showed how “courts of appeals have been, thus far, recognizing the differences between ERISA planwide claims — [such as] representational claims of the plan — and your average class action,” Yau said.
Consumers might be able to recover damages for the inherent value of their personal information stolen during the breach based upon Marriott’s own valuation of that same data.
A federal judge in Maryland has granted class certification in a data breach impacting over 133 million American consumers against hotel chain Marriott and its data security vendor Accenture, clearing the way for the litigation to move forward. The Court will allow the case to proceed as a class action on behalf of the first group of claimants the parties selected – an initial group of approximately 45 million consumers in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, and New York. The lawsuit stems from a data breach Marriott discovered in 2018 after it acquired Starwood, in which, by its own admission, 133.7 million guest records of Starwood customers were compromised. Marriott acknowledged in 2019 that the records included approximately 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers and 20.3 million encrypted passport numbers, among other sensitive personal information regarding hotel stays.
In granting class certification, Judge Paul Grimm of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Maryland issued a 70-plus page opinion that made clear he was certifying the case for potential trial, rather than for a pending settlement (as occurs in most other data breach cases). The opinion allows the plaintiffs to seek damages related to overpayment for hotel rooms, as well as statutory and nominal damages. The Court also found that consumers might be able to recover damages for the inherent value of their personal information stolen during the breach based upon Marriott’s own valuation of that same data.
DiCello Levitt Gutzler partner Amy Keller, Hausfeld partner James Pizzirusso, and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll partner Andrew N. Friedman are Co-Lead Plaintiffs’ counsel in the case. They issued the following joint statement:
“After three years of hard-fought litigation, the Court issued a well-reasoned opinion which provides a path forward to hold Marriott accountable for its egregious, four-year data breach. While many companies do the right thing and work to help their customers after a data breach, Marriott and Accenture chose to deny responsibility, vigorously attempting to convince the Court that they cannot be held liable to anyone impacted by the breach. We look forward to presenting our evidence to a jury.
The valuation of personal information is still fairly new territory for many Courts, and this is the first case to reach class certification on the issue. While the Court precluded our expert on this point, it also recognized that we might have the ability to introduce the value that Marriott itself derived from its customers’ data at trial as a component of damages the class sustained. The Court also accepted our experts’ damages methodology that Marriott and Starwood guests overpaid when making hotel reservations because of substandard security. Finally, the Court found that we could seek to recover nominal damages and statutory damages in some states. Marriott and Accenture are facing significant liability here, and we look forward to holding them to their legal and moral responsibilities.”
Filed in January 2018, the lawsuit alleges that Starwood, and later Marriott, took more than four years to discover the long-running data breach. Marriott became the world’s largest hotel chain when it acquired Starwood that same year.