Class-Action Suit Against Heartland

In an article titled, "Banks, credit unions scramble in wake of Heartland breach," Jaikumar Vijayan writes for Computer World that several banks have begun reporting fraud and have been forced to issue replacement cards. 

In addition, the first class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a woman in Woodbury,MN.

I would think this may just be the "tip of the iceberg" when it comes to lawsuits, as numerous credit unions and small banks will look for ways to recoup some of the exorbitant costs associated with a breach of this size.  Maybe Heartland Bank will lead the way.  Wouldn't that be a full circle and a half?

More likely it will be the Washington Credit Union League.  Based on the tone of their language in this document (Word) they are not very HPY with Heartland right now.

Here's a couple paragraphs from the ComputerWorld article.

"In the first real indication of the scope of the recently disclosed data breach at Heartland Payment Systems Inc., banks and credit unions from Washington to Maine have begun to reissue thousands of credit and debit cards over the past few days.

Several have also begun disclosing fraud associated with payment cards that were reported to them by Visa and MasterCard as having been exposed in the breach.

A Pennsylvania law firm today filed the first class-action lawsuit related to the breach. Chimicles & Tikellis LLP in Haverford, Pa., filed the lawsuit on behalf of Alicia Cooper, a resident of Woodbury, Minn., and others who might have been affected by the breach.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Trenton, alleges that Cooper, whose card was compromised in the breach, and others, were victims of Heartland's negligence in protecting cardholder data. The lawsuit, which calls for a jury trial, charged Heartland with breach of contract, breach of implied contract and breach of fiduciary contract for the breach..."

Looks to me like this is going to get rather messy for Heartland.  Click here to read the whole story at ComputerWorld.com

Related articles

• Payment Processor Heartland Reports Breach (cbsnews.com)
• Major Data Breach Puts Millions At Risk (cbsnews.com)
• Another day, another 100 million credit cards compromised (venturebeat.com)
• US credit card payment house breached by sniffing malware (theregister.co.uk)
• Heartland data breach could be bigger than TJX's (infoworld.com)