Expert answers questions about CHS class-action lawsuit
By Travis Kellar, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Based in
But what is a class-action lawsuit?
Q. What exactly is a class-action lawsuit?
A. A class-action lawsuit is one in which there are a large number of plaintiffs who have common actions against a defendant. It does need to be certified by a court and must meet certain standards. For example, there must be sufficiently large numbers of plaintiffs or potential plaintiffs to be a class action.
The concept is that separate actions by each plaintiff would be too unwieldy for the court system.
Another requirement is that there must be common facts in each case so that they can be tried all together. A class action is brought by representative plaintiffs on behalf of all those that were wronged in a common set of circumstances. The case of the representative plaintiffs (injuries suffered, etc) must be typical of the rest of the class (the rest of the potential plaintiffs).
Q. When are class-action lawsuits typically filed?
A. They are often brought with consumer product actions, securities fraud, environmental cases and the like. They are filed when there are a large number of people impacted by a common circumstance, such as a defective product.
A. Normally, the plaintiffs are all named in the complaint that is filed and involve one set of facts -- one incident. With a class action, only the representative plaintiffs are named and initially not all of the plaintiffs are even known.
Q. What are some pros and cons of class-action lawsuits?
A. From the point of view of a plaintiff, one pro is that a class action may allow a suit that would be have been too expensive or difficult to bring individually. Similarly an attorney that might view one plaintiff's suit as too small might be induced to take a class action with the potential cumulative awards.
A con is that class action suits are complicated and difficult to bring -- they do require attorneys experienced and knowledgeable in that area of the law.
What does the lawsuit say?</p>
According to a report the company filed on
CHS and its forensic expert,
The transferred information did not include any medical information or credit card information, but it did include names, addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers and
The lawsuit, filed on
The lawsuit also alleges that CHS "did not provide adequate security measures to protect Plaintiffs' sensitive information," and that CHS failed to notify patients of the breach in a timely manner, and "therefore, Plaintiffs were unable to take action to protect themselves from harm."
While no one from
"I certainly hope so," he said. "We welcome anybody that wants to join. We feel like they have a legitimate claim, whether or not their identity has been stolen."
No lawsuits against CHS referencing the data breach have been filed in the
Stewart said some that have approached his offices already have had their identity stolen as a result of the security breach.
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