WTVM Legal Break – Data Breach
Injury & Accident Attorney Serving Nearby Areas of Columbus & Fort Benning, Georgia and Phenix City, Alabama
Gary Bruce discusses claims involving data breaches and provides information on how to protect yourself from such an occurrence. Like all claims for compensation, recovery in a data breach case is limited to the damages you can prove. Insurance claims, personal injury claims, property claims and consumer claims are all limited by the damages which are suffered as a result of the other party. The exception in cases of theft or wanton neglect is that the actual and consequential damages can be accompanied by an award of punitive damages against the wrongdoer. The purpose of such damages is to punish the conduct and send a message that might deter future bad acts. If you have any questions about how damages are calculated in your case or whether punitive damages might be warranted, please do not hesitate to contact the Law Offices of Gary Bruce.
Transcript:
Maureen: Hello there and welcome to legal break I’m Maureen Akers and with us today Gary Bruce. Thank you so much for joining us again Gary!
Gary: Thank you!
Maureen: Great to have you here talking about issues that are very topical. Very recently a large settlement of about 11 million, or so had to do something had to do with this Ashley Madison website. There was a data breach and it kind of makes you wonder what our rights are when something like this happens.
Gary: Good question, because that’s one where you could point to who failed. I think what the allegations were that they had failed in their security of doing what they should have done to protect the individuals data and their personal information. A class action was brought on behalf of all those people that had their personal information hacked.
So the question is this, why is it 11 million why wouldn’t it have been 11 billion? It’s damages, it’s going to be controlled by what the damages are. What is the impact on my life, did it know it’s not going to be hurt feelings or somebody in that case found out something I guess I shouldn’t have been doing. But the issue does is it affected me economically? Does it affect me in a way that gives rights to a case? No, I guess not much. You know everybody’s going to get a little bit of something on that.
I think the interesting thing is the use of the class-action because we used to hear a lot about how bad they were, you know how we don’t need class actions. How they are in need of tort reform. We don’t hear much of that anymore for this reason. Ashley Madison and that group just wiped their slate clean. They can’t be sued now so corporate America finds it a useful tool to bring these kind of things to an end. So I do think it helps sometimes the corporation has to acknowledge the fault but it also absolves them from the individual cases it might arise.
Maureen: So is there anything that we can do to protect ourselves from a data breach?
Gary: Oh you know, it’s welcome to America 2017, so I guess be careful what you put on there. I think we have seen a lot of changes and because of the exposure, because people do have liability, I think we see them working hard to make sure these things don’t happen and in limiting the information that you do share. So many things in our society have benefited from the tort system, and my personal opinion because there’s responsibility. So it raises awareness – this is a problem I don’t want to be responsible for it. Let’s fix it and make sure it’s not a problem in the future.
Maureen: Right, very good! So you need to figure out how to protect yourself! But something happens you can definitely contact Gary Bruce law you need some more information. Thank you so much for joining us today Gary and we look forward to seeing you on a very nice Legal Break!
