$8.5 Million Settlement Reached in Gunster, Yoakley & Steward Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit

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Gunster, Yoakley & Steward, PA, has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that claimed a data breach discovered in November 2022 was a direct result of inadequate cybersecurity on the part of the Florida-based law firm.

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If preliminarily approved by the court, the proposed deal would cover approximately 746,000 United States residents whose personal information was compromised, accessed, exfiltrated or otherwise impacted by the Gunster, Yoakley & Steward data breach.

To receive benefits from the deal, class members must submit a valid, timely claim form online when the official settlement website—GYSDataBreachSettlement.com—goes live.

Class members can submit a claim form to receive up to $2,500 in reimbursement for “ordinary” out-of-pocket losses incurred as a result of the data breach, such as costs associated with accessing or freezing credit reports or purchasing credit monitoring services.

Covered individuals can also receive reimbursement for up to seven hours of lost time spent responding to receiving notice of the breach, at a rate of $30 per hour.

Class members who believe they suffered identity theft, fraud or other extraordinary losses can file a claim form with supporting documentation to receive up to $35,000 in reimbursement. They are also eligible for reimbursement for up to 10 hours spent remedying identity theft, fraud or other misuse of their information, at a rate of $30 per hour.

Finally, class members can submit a claim for three years of identity theft protection and credit monitoring services.

ClassAction.org will update this page if and when the deal receives preliminary approval from the court, and when the official Gunster, Yoakley & Steward data breach settlement website goes live, so be sure to check back often.

The data breach lawsuit against Gunster was filed in May 2024, and alleged that the law firm failed to protect clients’ private information when an unauthorized actor hacked into its document management file system. Gunster’s notice to affected individuals says that cybercriminals had access to the system for several weeks before it detected the intrusion on November 27, 2022.

According to the defendant’s online notice of the breach, the incident compromised personal information about Gunster’s clients, including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers and other government-issued identification numbers, financial account information and certain medical information.

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