MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—The final price tag to Target for its 2013 data breach is $59 million, following a federal district court entering a final judgment in financial institutions’ class action lawsuit.
The Target breach is estimated to have exposed information on 40 million payment cards and personal information on 110 million people.
Late last year Target and plaintiffs reached a $39-million settlement. The full cost to financial institutions has yet to be determined. The final judgment adds attorney's fees and payments to class representatives.
Carrie Hunt, NAFCU’s executive vice president of government affairs and general counsel, while praising plaintiffs’ win, emphasized that a real solution on merchant data breaches involves national data security standards for everyone in the payments chain.
“In the nearly three years since Target’s huge data breach, consumers remain extremely susceptible to cyberattacks,” said Hunt. “We continue to urge Congress to protect consumers’ financial information by enacting national data security standards for retailers and holding them directly accountable for their data breaches.
“Much more needs to be done to protect consumers and make credit unions whole,” Hunt continued. “Litigation is not the answer, and it is a poor substitute for much-needed data security standards for retailers.”
The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, in its final judgment:
- Approved the December settlement between Target and financial institution plaintiffs;
- Granted plaintiffs’ motion for $19.9 million in attorney’s fees and awards;
- Approved a service payment of $20,000 to each of the five settlement class representatives (including one credit union, CSE Federal Credit Union);
- Dismissed the case with prejudice.
The judgment has been described as the first case in which financial institutions have obtained class certification and a settlement against a retailer that suffered a data breach. Combined with the attorneys’ fees, the settlement creates about $59 million in overall monetary class benefits.
NAFCU said it continues to push for the passage of legislation – the “Data Security Act” – to create standards for merchants similar to those applied to credit unions and other financial institutions under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.