On September 17, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear an appeal it decided against Neiman Marcus over a payment card data breach, leaving in place the precedential ruling that held plaintiffs can sue for the trouble and expense of preventing fraud on their accounts.
The decision stems from a class action suit against Neiman Marcus over the alleged 2013 hack that compromised the credit card numbers of approximately 350,000 shoppers.
As we previously reported, the Seventh Circuit ruled in July that a group of plaintiffs who sued Neiman Marcus over the theft of their credit card information in a data security breach had standing to sue for fraudulent charges, as well as fraud-prevention expenses and credit monitoring. The appellate court reversed a prior decision from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, holding that the plaintiffs' injuries via unauthorized charges were insufficient to confer standing. The appellate decision is styled Remijas et al. v. The Neiman Marcus Group LLC, Case No. 14-3122.
Neiman Marcus asked the appellate court to rehear the appellate court decision en banc, claiming the court erred in its ruling and that the decision "all but declares that such breaches automatically confer standing." The same Circuit judges who decided the appeal rejected Neiman Marcus' request for rehearing. The ruling will allow the suit in Illinois federal district court to move forward.
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