Data breach claim

lostberlin

Hi I work self employed in health care, primarily for 2 companies.

One was involved in a data breach of contractors details last year with thousands of people data leaked by accident.

One of these contractors initiated a compensation claim. Their solicitors sent out a letter to all affected giving us the chance to join. A few have also joined the case, I don't know numbers but I guess dozens?

I ignored the letter as I know I have up to 6 years to claim. Also, I didn't want to unwittingly be cast aside for work opportunities, by discrimination by making a claim.

I haven't had much work from this company in a while and I'm currently training to do other things which should make me less reliant on them.

As such, I contacted the solicitors last week and they said a successful claim, no win no fee, should result in £1000-1500 damages. They are currently still. Working through everything but are sure of success.

Given potential predudice in not getting work with the company, would you say its worth going ahead with this amount?

Malthusian

If you go ahead with a no win no fee claim then ensure you know what costs you will be paying if you pull out (e.g. because you want to try to get work from the company again). And what happens if the court awards damages but not enough to cover the solicitor's fees.

If your claim is that good why not speak to another solicitor and pay the fees out of your own pocket? If your case is as good as they say, the fees might be lower in the long run as they won't charge extra to cover the risk of losing. (That said, there is the "reinventing the wheel" element if the first solicitor is handling many similar cases.)

Class action suits aren't possible in the UK so your case would be heard on its own merits.

I have no idea whether the sums they claim are realistic for compensation for a data protection breach (presumably you suffered no actual loss or you'd've said) so can't comment on that.

Gavin83

I too would look very carefully at what the terms are should you lose the case, decide to pull out or don’t win enough to cover their fees. I would expect you’d need to show some sort of quantifiable loss in order to sue and I’m gathering from your post this doesn’t exist. The solicitor could well be hoping for an out of court settlement given the low amount, if it actually goes to court I don’t really fancy your chances.

How much are they charging? I’d be surprised if you got much back from a £1k settlement so you could be going through this hassle and potential reputation damage just to line the pockets of the solicitor.

lostberlin

Hi

I don't know about pull out fees, but if I went ahead, I wouldn't pull out.

They take 25% in successful claim, and I assume the 1000-1500 related to the net amount.

As for 1000 to 1500, the lower end would be around 5 days work.

Why not a new solicitor? These guys have been working on it near a year and have lots of claimants, and most solicitors operate no win no fee structure with comparable 25% win amounts

Malthusian

lostberlin said:

As for 1000 to 1500, the lower end would be around 5 days work.

5 days' work? Not for me Clive. Not when it involves suing 1 of your only 2 customers (even if you hope to be less reliant later) and given the lack of clarity over what happens if they don't get an out of court settlement, it goes to court, and the award doesn't cover the legal fees.

If this happened last year, presumably the solicitor in question can give you their actual success rate and confirm whether any cases have gone to court or whether they are settling out of court. If they haven't had any yet, you could always carry on with the training and reconsider when you are certain there is no more work coming from that quarter.