What A Recent Court Of Appeal Decision Says About Data Breach Class Actions

One year ago today, we published a blog about the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench decision in Setoguchi v. Uber B.V., 2021 ABQB 18 in which a certification motion was dismissed. The proposed class action involved a data breach where Uber was hacked by third-party cyber-criminals.

We are noting that anniversary by providing our comments on the recently released appellate decision. We previously noted the court's finding decided that the nature of the personal information that was the subject of the data breach was not sufficiently sensitive to give rise to claim for damages. As a result, and in the absence of evidence showing harm to class members, the data breach alone did not form the basis for certification of the class action.