T-Mobile Opposes Transferring 16 Data Breach Class Actions for Consolidation

T-Mobile late Thursday took a hard line against the plaintiffs in the 16 class actions who sued the company over its Jan. 19 data breach disclosure and want the cases transferred for pre-trial consolidation under a single judge.

All the T-Mobile customers who sued are “contractually obligated to resolve their claims against T-Mobile through individual arbitration, not class action litigation,” said the carrier’s opposition at the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, where the 16 class actions await a ruling. “T-Mobile will therefore move to compel arbitration of each named plaintiff’s claims,” it said: “If granted, those motions will eliminate class action litigation over the cyberattack.”

Transfer won’t “promote the just and efficient conduct of the action,” said T-Mobile. Its motions to compel arbitration “turn on individual, plaintiff-specific evidence showing that the plaintiff agreed to individual arbitration,” it said. “Transfer for coordinated or centralized pretrial proceedings will not eliminate those individualized inquiries.”

T-Mobile added that if the panel disagrees, it would favor transfer and consolidation in either the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Missouri, or in Kansas City, Kansas, near the company's secondary U.S. headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas.