Brandon Tavelli writes:
On June 25, 2010, Judge Richard Berman of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. in Hammond v. The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., dismissing in its entirety a putative class action lawsuit arising from the loss of backup tapes containing personal information in the spring of 2008. In coming to his decision, Judge Berman rejected the plaintiffs’ arguments that they had standing to pursue their claims for negligence, negligence per se, breach of implied contract, breach of fiduciary duty as well as for violations of certain state consumer protection laws. He held that “Plaintiffs lack standing because their claims are future-oriented, hypothetical and conjectural.” The court also held that even assuming, arguendo, that plaintiffs could be said to have standing to pursue such claims, each of their claims would fail because the plaintiffs failed to show that they suffered any actual harm as a result of the tape loss incident.
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