TD Bank Reaches Settlement With Pro Se Plaintiff in Capital One Data Breach Action

Pro se plaintiff Venton Smith reached a settlement in principle with defendant TD Bank in a dispute about a 2019 Capital One data breach, said the parties in a Friday notice (docket 3:23-cv-02804) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. In his June lawsuit, Smith claims his personally identifiable information was exposed in a 2019 Capital One data breach in which an Amazon Web Services employee stole data affecting about 106 million customers. Smith is suing more than 20 merchants, banks and credit reporting agencies, alleging negligence, unjust enrichment, breach of confidence and contract and violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law. Smith alleges at least 12 existing accounts were fraudulently accessed to buy unknown merchandise using his existing accounts for American Express, Best Buy, Capital One, Chase, Citibank, Macy’s and Nordstrom for a total $92,300 in loans, merchandise and products. A July notice said Smith and credit reporting agency Equifax were consummating terms of a settlement agreement and filing a dismissal with prejudice for Equifax (see 2307140038). Also in July, Citibank, Best Buy and Macy’s (see 2307240047) moved the court to compel arbitration in the case; Capital One and Amazon said Smith’s claims should be barred because he didn’t opt out of the class action settlement; and TransUnion said Smith’s claims were preempted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (see 2307130055).