Morrisons to be sued by 2,000 staff over data leak
The 2014 leak of almost 100,000 Morrisons employees’ personal details has sparked legal action against the supermarket by the thousands affected by the breach.
Morrisons' vast employee database containing data including national insurance numbers, salaries, DOB, home addresses, bank account details was uploaded to filesharing websites and sent to national newspapers in May 2014.
Former employee Andrew Skelton, who perpetrated the breach, currently serves an eight year jail term for the misdeed however, a lawsuit, backed by a substantial number of staff holds the supermarket liable for the breach.
Skelton's exposure of employee data cost the supermarket a full £2m to address – with further expenditure to come if the legal action gains traction.
Over 2,000 current and former staff affected from the group litigation order heard the London High Court today (Tuesday 27 October). In turn, the lawsuit will rest for four months so more Morrisons staff can join the action which is being pursued by JMW Solicitors.
Making the case for the litigation, Nick McAleenan, a data privacy lawyer at JMW, said: “Whenever employers are given personal details of their staff, they have a duty to look after them.
“That is especially important given that most companies now gather and manage such material digitally and, as a result, it can be accessed and distributed relatively easily if the information is not protected.”
Shares in Morrisons fell by 2.8p to 172.3p following the hearing.
The action comes during a busy week of failed data protection following TalkTalk being held to ransom over the fate of the personal information of a portion of its four million UK customers.