Maurice Blackburn, Bannister Law Class Actions and Centennial Lawyers join up on Medibank breach action
Three major law firms will drop individual claims and join forces to secure compensation for as many as 9.7 million Medibank customers affected by last year’s cyber attack.
Maurice Blackburn, Bannister Law and Centennial Lawyers will work together to secure compensation for as many as 9.7 million Medibank customers affected by last year’s data breach.
The three law firms, which had been pursuing separate actions against Australia’s largest health insurer, confirmed on Sunday that they had entered into a joint co-operation agreement against both Medibank and AHM in relation to the October breach. It comes after Maurice Blackburn in November lodged a formal representative complaint against Medibank with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which has the power to order compensation.
The lodgement from the firm came as the OAIC announced it would kick off an investigation into Medibank’s personal information handling practices, in the wake of the breach.
The OAIC’s investigation is focused on whether Medibank took reasonable steps to protect the personal information they held from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
If the investigation finds serious or repeated interferences with privacy in contravention of Australian privacy law, the Commissioner has the power to seek civil penalties of up to $2.2m for each contravention through the Federal Court. After agreeing to merge their legal actions, the law firms say they will follow up on the OAIC complaint seeking compensation for those affected by the breach. They have so far registered tens of thousands of Medibank customers in relation to the compensation claims.
Maurice Blackburn’s head of class actions, Andrew Watson, said the co-operation agreement was a significant development in the fight for compensation.
“This data breach has caused millions of Australians significant distress. The co-operation agreement ensures that all three law firms are working together for the common aim of obtaining compensation for those affected as quickly as possible,” he said.
George Newhouse of Centennial Lawyers said the health insurer had failed its customers by failing to protect their data.
“The data breach exposes the lack of safeguards in place to prevent such personal and private information being released to wrongdoers and Medibank and AHM have failed policy holders,” Dr Newhouse said.
The breach, which took place in October last year, saw hackers access information on 9.7 million current and former customers of Medibank and AHM, including names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, as well as the claims data of hundreds of thousands of policy holders. With Medibank refusing to pay the $US10m ($14.3m) ransom demanded by the hackers, a data dump in December saw the full trove of stolen records posted to the web.
More Coverage
Is Helfie AI really Australia’s newest tech unicorn?
The firm says its AI technology can test for health issues including Covid and cancer via a phone app. It also says it’s worth more than $1bn. But questions about the valuation remain unanswered.
Olivia Wirth’s big plans for Myer take shape
Former Qantas executive Olivia Wirth has moved at lightning speed in her first 100 days in charge of the retailer. This is where she wants to take it.