The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) serves as a lifeline for more than 1.5 million California public employees, retirees, and their families. The system manages pensions and benefits for these workers and this system must operate reliably to protect those who have given so much to California.
Beyond the emotional factor surrounding hopes and dreams for retirement, pensions, and healthcare are key factors in these workers’ compensation. State pension and health benefits are among the most attractive factors to a career as a public worker – when this system falters, it is failing our teachers, emergency response workers, social workers, and so many more of the public service workers that California relies on.
In the course of these responsibilities, CalPERS relies on Pension Benefit Information, LLC (PBI) to monitor and report deaths within the CalPERS network. Due to their negligent handling of sensitive information, PBI recently suffered a data breach that exposed CalPERS members to catastrophic loss of privacy on or around June 22nd, 2023.
Hackers obtained members’ names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. There is no telling what these hackers plan to do with this information. This data breach was entirely preventable, and PBI must be held accountable for exposing these hard-working California workers to massive risk.
Our class action lawsuit lawyers are taking action in this case and others like it. Anyone whose data has been illegally accessed due to negligence deserves financial compensation. To learn more about our work on this case and others like it, contact our PBI data breach lawyers of consumer class action attorneys today.
What did PBI do Wrong?
Cyberattacks are a known risk for data management companies and are preventable. PBI handles uniquely sensitive information and has every reason to fear cyberattacks. As such, the company should have spared no expense in its efforts to protect this information. In failing to adequately prevent this data breach, PBI put profits over people. The company must be held accountable.
Those who rely on CalPERS, the members of the class, suffered damages as a result of PBI’s negligence. PBI has a legal responsibility to uphold the rights to privacy of the class, as guaranteed in the California Constitution. As a direct result of PBI’s negligence and their breach of duty, the members of the class suffered and continue to suffer:
- Loss of control over the use of identity.
- Harm to the constitutional right to privacy.
- Lost time, past and future, investigating and attempting to recover lost funds.
- Severe stress, anger, and anxiety.
This breach represented catastrophic risk to individuals who entrusted PBI with their most sensitive information in their pursuit of retirement and safety. Our PBI data breach lawyers bring over 300 years of combined experience and believe that you should be able to pursue healthcare and pension safely with no risk of identity theft and fraud. If you suffer the deeply stressful experience of a data leak, contact us to see if you may have a case against the responsible parties.
What Is a Class Action Lawsuit?
Our PBI data breach lawyers have filed a class action lawsuit against PBI for their negligent handling of California public workers’ information. Class action lawsuits advocate for a group of people to receive financial compensation, as opposed to one individual person. Class actions allow people to hold large companies accountable because together, as a class, plaintiffs have a greater impact than they may have as individuals. These people, known as a class once grouped by a judge, have all suffered the same damages from the same cause. In this case, all the members of the class have suffered a data breach.
Financial compensation resulting from class actions is divided evenly amongst the members of the class. Our team of class action attorneys is proud to have delivered financial compensation to millions of deserving Americans. Our team has pursued class actions to secure compensation for victims of data breaches, data privacy violations, wage and hour abuses, and more.
If you have suffered damages that you believe may have been suffered by many other people in the same manner, contact our team of class action attorneys today.