A Saskatchewan lawyer has initiated a class-action lawsuit against Home Depot on behalf of Canadian shoppers who may have been affected by a data breach.
The home improvement retailer confirmed on Sept. 2 its payment systems had been hacked and customer information had been stolen, but lawyer Tony Merchant says this acknowledgement comes five months after the first breach took place.
“This class action lawsuit seeks Canada-wide compensation against Home Depot for its serious failure to protect customers’ privacy and sensitive financial information”, Merchant said, in a statement. “People contacting our law firm are concerned about identity theft or other misuse of their personal information. Individuals who have had their privacy breached should be entitled to compensation under Canadian law.
“We think it is likely that tens of thousands of Canadians have been adversely affected. Given our law firm’s experience and successful handling of the Winners/HomeSense class action regarding a similar data breach, we intend to pursue this new class action in a determined way to ensure Canadians are compensated and see their privacy protected.”
The is but the latest in a string of cases where retailers must not only scramble to secure their data systems from outsiders, but deal with the customer fallout. With its crisis communications playbook now off the self, Home Depot is likely looking at how other companies have dealt with their own hacks to gauge how they’ll approach wary consumers.
Russ Martin recently examined just how well Target, Well.ca, Kickstarter and Neiman Marcus were coping with their PR crises in “After the Hack: Four companies respond to customer data breaches.”
