Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“PTSD Damages For A Non-Event”

We briefly mentioned the other day the remarkable litigation over a laptop theft which (it seemed at the time) might have led to a data breach imperiling the personal information of military veterans. The feared breach resulted in an emergency request to Congress for $160 million to provide credit counseling to veterans, and, more recently, a $20 million settlement of class-action claims brought against the Veterans Administration, based at least in part on allegations of emotional distress associated with the (unfounded, as it turned out) fear of identity theft. If you’re wondering who the biggest winner will be from all this, Bank Lawyer’s Blog is pleased to provide the answer.

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8 Comments

  • So I get to be the first veteran to opine on this calamity. Comments worth noting:
    “after taking the data home without permission.” The last two words appear to be our smoking gun. Even when economics are kind of not looking so good, and in all likelihood my name, SSN, and other personal data was probably on some Excel file buried in that laptop, I just can’t feel good about myself accepting a $1500 handout for any reason, even if the guy in questions was a complete dumb ass. It amounts to a redistribution scheme whose primary beneficiaries are – guess who? All in the name of helping make people whole again.

    Next, there’s this little byte: “This is a very positive result [for our firms, the partners, and my vacation-home plans],” said Douglas J. Rosinski, an attorney representing the veterans groups. “A lot of hard work went into finding creating [an injured group] a resolution that all the parties could be proud to say they were a part of bringing about.” I though I would make some minor satirical adjustments.

  • As a veteran who works in the IT world, I actually read about the theft a little while before it hit major news outlets and a long time before I got the letter warning me about the theft in the mail. The interesting thing that I read in the write-up is “veterans who show harm from the data theft will be able to receive payments ranging from $75 to $1,500.” Since the data likely really wasn’t accessed, and certainly wasn’t misused in any wide-ranging way, doesn’t that mean that no veterans will actually be able to show harm anyway?

    • By Jay

  • I have to say that, while I shake my head at a lot of stories here, lawsuits like this make companies pay attention to data security. At my little 5 person company, we use “whole disk encryption” on our laptops. The entire disk drive is encrypted, and you need a password and a fingerprint to boot the computer and see any data (or do anything with the computer)

    This technology is widely available and works well. It costs us about $50 per machine.

    It’s a shame it’s We the Taxpayers who will pay the bill for this (and that the “damage” awards are silly). But slapping a company with a eye-opening punitive damage (say $1M) for being careless may be the only way for them to take something like this seriously.

    160 Million is about 159 million too much.

    • By Robert

  • With no veteran (I am a Service-Connected Disabled Veteran) actually being able to show harm (with no access to the laptop) then all the $20M goes to charities and they and the law firm are the only ones to benefit from this suit. What a load of crap.

    • By kimsch

  • And people wonder why Shakespeare’s quote about lawyers gets repeated so often…

  • Fear of identify theft certainly seems silly. But there are legitimate “fear of” claims. If you have a defective pacemaker that is in your heart that you have to worry about every day, for example, that is a real injury.

    The test, of course, is how would you feel if it happened to you? I would not spend a lot of time on fear of identity theft. Fear of my heart device not working? Who is not beaten down by that?

  • The test is NOT how would you feel if it happened to you. The cure for fear of a defective pacemaker is replacement of the device.

  • It is that simple, huh Smoke? Just go in a pull the sucker out. Good thing folks with pacemakers are especially at low risk for heart surgery right? How about it is the pacemakers lead wires that have become imbedded in the patient’s tissues? Just jerk those out and replace them?