ATLANTA (Legal Newsline) – After a class action lawsuit was recently filed against Home Depot over a data breach, the company says its main focus is on its customers.
Stephen Holmes, the director of corporate communications for Home Depot, said throughout the investigation and mitigation of the data breach, the company's primary focus has been on its customers.
"We'll deal with any legal matters in due course and in the proper venue," Holmes said.
A class action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on Dec. 2.
Harold E. Hill, Michele Jhingoor, Bruce Holdridge, Scott McGiffid and James M. Burden claim Home Depot should have done more to prevent the breach in its computer system that compromised millions of customers' store credit card numbers and other personal information.
The plaintiffs claim the defendant knew about a possible data breach as early as 2008, but did nothing to prevent an attack.
On Sept. 8, Home Depot disclosed that a breach had occurred and that an estimated 56 million in-house customer credit card accounts were at risk of being stolen.
On Nov. 6, the company disclosed that the breach included about 53 million email addresses.
Home Depot relied on outdated software and did not adequately encrypt customers' information or conduct vulnerability scans of computers, according to the suit.
Home Depot offered customers one year of credit monitoring after the breach, but the plaintiffs said the attack left them vulnerable for years to come.
The lawsuit also said the company did not offer to pay for attorney costs that a customer might need to investigate possible identity theft.
The plaintiffs are represented by James Evangelista, Jeffrey R. Harris and Darren W. Penn of Harris Penn Lowry LLP in Atlanta; Howard Longman, Jason D'Agnenic and Patrick Slyne of Stull, Stull & Brody of New York; Gary Graifman of Kantrowitz, Goldhamer & Graifman P.C. on Montvale, N.J.; William Federman and Amy H. Wellington of Federman & Sherwood of Oklahoma City; and Cornelius Dukelow of Abington Cole + Ellery in Tulsa, Okla.
The case is assigned to District Judge Leigh Martin May.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia case number: 1:14-cv-03845