Lawyers in British Airways data breach compensation case lose £1m fee claim

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I recently looked at the pros and cons of joining the heavily advertised Group Litigation Orde r currently working through the courts in respect of the 2018 British Airways data breach.

A group of legal firms is bringing the first US-style class action lawsuit of its kind in the UK. If you sign up and were impacted by the British Airways data breach in 2018, you could receive a payment.

A court hearing was held last week to discuss what costs should be born by BA if it loses.

PGMBM, one of the law firms involved, believed that – if it wins the case – British Airways should pay for the £1m advertising campaign that PGMBM has been running to find claimants.

PGMBM claimed that it had spend £443,000 on advertising so far and intended to spend another £557,000 before the case was heard.

At the High Court on 2nd February, Mr Justice Saini told PGMBM to take a hike.

He made it clear that PGMBM’s advertising costs would not be recoverable from British Airways if the airline loses the case. They must be met from the cut of the proceeds paid to the lawyers by the claimants.

PS. If you read the full judgement, you will see that only 23,000 people have so far joined the action despite advertising spend of £443,000. Head for Points could have generated a large percentage of this on its own! The advertising budget has not been well spent so far.

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This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

DZOO says:

13 Feb13 February 09:09

As a claimant (which I am not), I would be delighted that so few people have joined the Class. If this works in the same way as the US system and assuming there is no further opportunity to join the Class post-award, any award will be shared pro-rata and so larger slices of the pie all around!
- JDB says:
  
  13 Feb13 February 09:22
  
  I think you will find any damages will be considered on a per capita basis and will be very low, so the size of the class won’t matter. To the extent that BA covers any actual losses that can be proved to have been caused by the data breach (ie compensatory damages) any additional (general) damages will not be very meaningful. What personal harm can those affected by the data breach really show and what would it be in monetary terms?
Chris Heyes says:

13 Feb13 February 09:44

Rob a serious question would you have run with the story/action if they’d have paid you enough ?
- Rob says:
  
  13 Feb13 February 10:14
  
  If they’d approached us in 2019 pre covid we might have, yes. BA was making over £1 billion per year profit at that point. We wouldn’t do it now as an editorial partnership. They are free to buy advertising like anyone else, of course, and some of the ads pop up on here anyway via Google Adsense.
D D says:

13 Feb13 February 09:56

Yep. And commenters on their social media adverts have not treated the ambulance chaser lawyers kindly.

There was a bit of hand-waving about insurance cover, but it still appeared to me that anyone joining the spree might still be on the hook for some costs in case of failure. In the event they lost the case, suppose the insurers chose not to pay out if they decided the case had not been handled correctly? Anyway, all seemed a bit too parasitic for me, and not the time to be kicking the airline industry or their employees.
Matarredonda says:

13 Feb13 February 10:14

Court actions of this type disgust me.
The so called ambulance chasers of the legal world are slime and you can be totally sure they themselves win big.
Bear-ingup says:

13 Feb13 February 10:59

Maybe they should have advertised in the Daily Mail?
Will says:

13 Feb13 February 11:53

I’m not hugely versed on the original details of this breach, but wasn’t it pretty badly handled by BA? Didn’t they break the rules on reporting etc.

Now regardless of whether or not this firm is honourable or not, and putting to one side BA’s current financial predicament, BA have an obligation to handle your data in accordance with the law of the land, which they did not snd further if they turn failed to act appropriately once the breach was known I do think that’s a very serious case for such a well resourced company.

You can’t just tell customers your handling their data correctly and not be handling it correctly.

As for damages, cancelling credit cards/changing passwords/remaining vigilant for other online accounts that may have shared passwords / physical addresses so fraudsters can guess login /payment authentication. That’s a real thing for anyone who was affected by the breach that’s taken up hours of their time and potentially continues to be a concern.

BA definitely shouldn’t be getting away without reasonable penalty/comp for that.

Different story if their systems were robust and compliant and reporting was done correctly.

Apologies if my understanding of the breach isn’t correct and they did have good systems and reported corrrctly.
- ChrisC says:
  
  13 Feb13 February 13:28
  
  BA have been fined £20m by the Information Commissioner for allowing the breach in the first part and how they subsequently dealt with it
  
  As a fine this goes back to the UK and European governments that were covered by the ICOs investigation and not to any individuals whose data was part of the breach.
  - kitten says:
    
    13 Feb13 February 17:12
    
    Yes however that fine has established the proof that BA was guilty.
    
    Is it a criminal offence they got fined for? or civil. If criminal even more helpful as that would mean an even higher level proof requirement has been satisfied.
    
    I think the art on getting civil compensation for this will be getting a formula for quantum of compensation accepted. On an individual basis in UK courts this would be quite a task and I believe would require a more than good case to be made proving cause and effect of specific losses.
    
    If there is no level of compensation specified in the law that found BA guilty then I think the lawyers are going to have a tough job on the civil side as they would be breaking a lot of new ground here so far as the UK legal system is concerned.
    
    I am not an expert here but I think the compensation for individuals should be framed within the legislation BA was fined for breaching and a credible level of fine should also have been levied on BA even if it was necessary to make it a balloon payment or spread it over several years to be paid.
    - ChrisC says:
      
      13 Feb13 February 18:14
      
      As far as I’m aware there is no provision in the GDPR legislation for compensation to be paid to those affected by a data breach.
      
      Lets say the ICO fine of £20m is used as a limit by the judge (not saying it will be but if a regulator feels £20m is sufficient punishment then why should a judge disagree?) then do you divide that amongst the 23k people who signed up with lawyers or those that had some details leaked or those that had credit card details leaked?
      - kitten says:
        
        13 Feb13 February 19:54
        
        It ‘s quite possible that a judge might disagree with a regulator. Going by the paltry fine this made it look like one of the all too many regulated industries without sufficently strong regulators or whose regulators are all too cosy with the industry they’re supposed to be regulating
        
        A pI55-poor 20 million – what? 1/500th or less of *profits* (not turnover) for the year? makes me think the regulator is not a strong regulator regardless of circumstances.
        
        The courts and judicial reviews are a way of getting justice a regulator has not provided.
the_real_a says:

13 Feb13 February 12:22

I do hope the lawyers used a points earning credit card to buy the £1m Ads. How ironic would it be if they earned Avios from it 🙂
TJ says:

13 Feb13 February 12:49

There is a place for class action lawsuits but this case isn’t it. My concern is for the folks who may have been duped into signing up on the basis that winning was more or less a done deal and that they had nothing to lose (“no win, no fee”). However, they may find themselves on the hook to pay hidden costs buried deep in the small print (disbursements, etc).