When a company's computer systems are raided by hackers, all too often it must brace itself for being victimized a second time by the class action bar. Plaintiffs frequently target such companies for class actions on behalf of the consumers whose data might have been exposed as a result of the potential data breach. The fact that the consumers rarely have experienced any real harm can be the Achilles' heel of these data-breach class actions. "World of Warcraft" creator Blizzard Entertainment Inc. was able to capitalize on this vulnerability when a court dismissed most of a putative class action against the company, finding that plaintiffs had failed to allege sufficient harm as to a number of claims. See Bell v. Blizzard Entertainment Inc. (pdf), No. 2:12-cv-09475 (C.D. Cal. July 11, 2013).
The suit arose after hackers breached Blizzard's Battle.net system in August 2012 and stole user information. Two gamers responded by filing a putative class action, seeking to represent 10 million players worldwide. The plaintiffs alleged that Blizzard should have emailed or called affected users to notify them of the breach rather than simply posting a notice...
