MOVEit Breach Suits Against Genworth, TIAA and Others Head to Boston

Many financial services companies affected by the attack are involved because they relied on Pension Benefit Information, a MOVEit user, to track life insurance insureds and retirement benefit recipients and see whether those people were still alive.

Some of the many suits related to the attack named many parties as defendants. Others focused on Progress Software, PBI or individual, consumer-facing organizations, such as insurance companies or pension plan administrators.

The centralization fight: Caldwell noted in the case transfer order that some parties wanted pretrial proceedings centralized in Massachusetts, some wanted proceedings centralized in other federal districts, and some wanted to have their litigation handled entirely in the courts where the suits were originally filed.

Genworth, for example, supported centralization, according to the order. Prudential and TIAA wanted claims against them considered separately.

“All actions can be expected to share common and complex factual questions as to how the MOVEit vulnerability occurred, the circumstances of the unauthorized access and data exfiltration, and Progress’s response to it, as well as the response of various downstream MOVEit users and customer-facing defendants with whom plaintiffs did business,” Caldwell wrote in the order.

Centralization should streamline the pretrial the proceedings and conserve the resources of the parties, their lawyers and the courts, Caldwell said.

“Although no single defendant is named in all cases, we are of the opinion that the parties can obtain significant efficiencies by placing all actions concerning the vulnerabilities in the MOVEit software before a single judge,” Caldwell added.

Caldwell noted that centralization affects only investigations involving the questions that the parties have in common, and that the original courts can continue to address the questions that aren’t directly affected by centralization, if the judges in the original courts choose to do so.

The panel picked Massachusetts to be the “transferee district” for the MOVEit cases because Progress Software is based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and more MOVEit cases are pending in the Massachusetts district than in any other, according to the order.

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