Days after Hendrix took his legal stand, Kaitlyn Thiel, a former employee of the law firm, followed suit with a more extensive 48-page class action complaint, echoing similar claims on behalf of fellow employees whose data had been stolen during the breach. These claims include allegations of negligence, negligence per se, breach of implied contract, unjust enrichment, and a breach of fiduciary duty.
A Fierce Defense
Marshall & Melhorn, in its motion for dismissal, dissected the two plaintiffs’ positions. It asserted that Hendrix had failed to establish a connection between the data breach and any harm he suffered. In contrast, Thiel managed to outline her injuries, such as fraudulent bank charges, unauthorized account access, and an increase in spam calls and emails. However, the firm argued that Thiel’s claims were ultimately insufficient to warrant action.
The law firm claimed that the negligence claim could not proceed due to Ohio’s economic loss doctrine, which bars recovery in tort for purely economic damages. Marshall & Melhorn discredited Thiel’s complaints of “fear, anxiety, stress, inconvenience, and nuisance” as “conjectural,” insisting that such types of harm are legally unsupportable.
