By ThinkPol Staff

A British Columbian has launched a proposed provincial class action suit against the credit reporting bureau Equifax over the data breach that compromised personal information of thousands of Canadians.

Joshua Temple of Tofino, BC, is bringing this action on his own behalf and on behalf of a proposed class defined as: “all persons residing in British Columbia whose Personal Information was contained on electronic databases in the control of Equifax and which was compromised and/or accessed by others between March 8, 2017 and July 31, 2017,” court documents filed at the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver shows^[1]
TEMPLE, Joshua v EQUIFAX CANADA CO. VLC-S-S-180347
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US Department of Homeland Security, Computer Emergency Readiness Team (“US CERT”) first informed Equifax of a potential vulnerability on or about March 8, 2017, according the the statement of claim.

Equifax conducted security scans and confirmed that the company’s systems are vulnerable on or about March 15, 2017, and first detected an exploitation of the vulnerability on or about June 29, 2017, the suit alleges.

“By August 15, 2017, Equifax knew that Personal Information of consumers had been stolen,” the statement of claim alleges. “However, Equifax did not publicly disclose this fact until September of 2017.”

The credit bureau did not inform the customers of the beach until September 7, 2017, the complain states.

Even after discovering the hack, “Equifax provided ongoing assurances to its customers, including the Plaintiff and the proposed Credit Monitoring Subclass Members, that there were no critical developments to be reported, such as the access to and theft of their Personal Information,” according the statement of claim.

The lawsuit cites, among other things, breach of the Privacy Act, negligence, negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment by Equifax as the legal basis for the action.

The plaintiff is seeking general damages for negligence, breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of the Privacy Act, as well as restitution for unjust enrichment and waiver of tort, special and pecuniary damages and punitive damages, according to the statement of claim.

Two Canada-wide class actions against Equifax, by Sotos^[2]https://www.sotosllp.com/2017/09/canadian-class-action-commenced-against-equifax-over-security-breach2/ or Merchant Law Group^[3]https://www.merchantlaw.com/class-actions/equifax, are currently working their way through the Ontario courts.