Extract from Scott Ball’s article “Deluge of Class Action Suits Over Coinbase Data Breach Is Cautionary Tale for Companies of All Sizes”
When Coinbase disclosed a major data breach on May 15, law firms were ready to pounce. By the end of that day, they’d filed six class action lawsuits. The number filed over the breach has since surged past a dozen, with most filed in New York and California.
“For plaintiff attorneys, the race is two-pronged: Be first to file and do so in the most favorable jurisdiction,” said Mark Henriques, a Womble Bond Dickinson partner. “Lawyers’ actual investment in time and money isn’t that much. It’s mostly a matter of being prepared and moving quickly.”
Those dynamics, along with the increasing number of data breaches occurring at U.S. companies, help explain why the number of data breach class actions has exploded in recent years, rocketing from 604 in 2022 to 1,320 in 2023 and 1,488 in 2024, according to the law firm Duane Morris.
Many of the Coinbase lawsuits accuse the company, the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, of negligence, lax security measures and poor handling of the breach aftermath.
Coinbase didn’t respond to Law.com’s request for comment. In response to inquiries from other media outlets, it didn’t directly respond to allegations, instead steering media inquiries to a blog post that describes what occurred and how the company is protecting its customers in the aftermath of the attack.
