Casino Rama Hacker Attack Lawsuit Fails to Receive Class-Action Certification

Casino Rama Resort is known as the largest and most popular First Nations casino location in Canada and its close partnership with Gateway Casinos & Entertainment has given results in recent years. The resort became notoriously known for the cyber attack it experienced in 2016 and a class-action lawsuit was among the main goals of plaintiffs directly affected by it. As it was ruled, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice refused to give it this certification.

Justice Belobaba said no to the class-action certification of this lawsuit that could possibly affect directly as many as 200,000 individuals. The justice pointed out that the attack caused no losses for the casino patrons of Casino Rama and that the hacker responsible for this crime is not listed in the lawsuit. Considering the aforementioned arguments, it was safe to say that a class-action certification would be reaching.

Cyber Attack Accessed Personal Info

Class-action lawsuits in Canada become increasingly rare, as it is evident by the careful examination and evaluation before granting this certification. Ontario judge does not consider the breach of security that happened at Casino Rama appropriate for class-action status. The reason behind this might be that it involves individuals and their personal information part of the casino patrons’ database of the gaming venue.

Individuals pleaded that sensitive information such as their income, their work address, credit files, and gambling records were disclosed soon after the cyber attack had taken place. The details were published online for everyone to see. This was a breach of confidence and pieces of information that ought to have remained a private matter.

Judge Belobaba pointed out that every individual has certain pieces of information disclosed and this is going to make matters very different from one person to the other. Some of them had their income published online, whereas others had less harmful information leaking such as their email addresses. In this sense, every individual could be eligible for a different standard of care.

Plaintiffs Pursue Compensation

Plaintiffs were unable to introduce evidence in support of their breach claims which eventually led to the collapse of the breach of contract issues. This meant that the ultimate decision issued by justice was that this case is not going to be a class-action one. He made it clear, however, that even if such class definition had been given, he would have defined the class members in a different, more narrow manner.

He further clarified that Casino Rama management and Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation had good reaction despite the controversial situation. The entities were quick to react and remove the personal information from the place where it was published. The websites collaborated as well, which led to a quick solution. Meanwhile, casino patrons and floor staff were also notified about the security breach.

The last days of March saw Cathy Beagan-Flood, the lawyer for Casino Rama claim the hacker who stole the information has affected only 10,900 individuals. In its entirety, the stolen information reached 4.5 gigabytes equating to about 14,000 files. As she clarified, the aforementioned 200,000 individuals include people that have received a notification but never had their information published online. Plaintiffs directly affected by the breach are after CA$60 million in compensations