Back in November 2012, Nationwide Mutual Insurance disclosed an attack on their network that compromised customers’ personal information. The breach turned out to be pretty large, with over 1 million affected.
Two potential class action lawsuits were filed following the breach, including Galaria v. Nationwide and Hancox v. Nationwide. The Hancox case was transferred to the Southern District of Ohio in March and consolidated with the Galaria complaint.
Now Judge Watson has granted Nationwide’s motion to dismiss both suits. To cut to the chase: as other courts have held, unless the named plaintiffs can demonstrate injury-in-fact (e.g., if their information had been misused) or impending as opposed to speculative harm, they’re not going to survive a motion to dismiss.
I’ve uploaded the court’s opinion and order here (pdf), and am trying to find out whatever happened to the California Insurance Commission’s investigation of the breach. I’ll update this post if/when I get an answer from the Commission.