Toyotetsu North America Facing Class Action Over October 2021 Data Breach

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

Kentucky-based car parts manufacturer Toyotetsu North America has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit in the wake of an October 2021 data breach.

Per the 33-page case, Toyotetsu failed to take reasonable steps to adequately safeguard the personally identifiable information of customers and/or employees from unauthorized access. The lawsuit says the data breach, discovered by the defendant in early October 2021, exposed consumers’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

According to the suit, those whose information was compromised now face “years of constant surveillance of their financial and personal records, monitoring, and loss of rights.”

The case alleges that Somerset, Kentucky-based Toyotetsu, whose customers include Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Nissan and Subaru, first noticed “unusual network activity” on October 7, 2021, after which the company discovered that an unauthorized individual had gained access to private information stored on its network.

The suit contends, however, that the unauthorized actor likely accessed Toyotetsu’s network “well in advance” of October 7, meaning the individual had “unfettered and undetected access to Defendant’s networks for a considerable period of time” before the company became aware of the breach.

The case says that Toyotetsu did not notify data breach victims until late November 2021, and the data breach notice sent to affected consumers did not reveal when or how the unauthorized individual first gained access to the company’s system.

The complaint argues that although the letter included an offer of 12 months of credit and identity monitoring services, this purported relief is “wholly inadequate” to compensate data breach victims in that it fails to account for the possibility that they will face multiple years of identity theft and financial fraud and “entirely fails” to sufficiently compensate consumers for the unauthorized release of their information.

The case, which was initially filed in Pulaski Circuit Court on April 14 before being removed to Kentucky’s Eastern District Court on May 13, 2022, looks to represent anyone who Toyotetsu North America identified as among those impacted by the data breach, including anyone who was sent notice of the incident.

Get class action lawsuit news sent to your inbox – sign up for ClassAction.org’s newsletter here.