Defendant IBM Moves to Stay MOVEit Data Breach Action, Citing JPML Transfer Order

IBM, a defendant with Progress Software Corp. (PSC) in a class action brought by plaintiff Kimberlee Daniels involving the May MOVEit file transfer software data breach, moved for an order staying the action, after the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation’s Oct. 4 transfer order for In re: MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, said its Wednesday motion (docket 1:23-cv-12010) in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston. Plaintiff and defendants don’t oppose the instant request for a 30-day stay, it said. The JPML’s Oct. 4 order granted, in part, a transfer motion for centralization of related actions for coordinated pretrial proceedings before the Massachusetts federal court for centralized proceedings before U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, and parties in Daniels anticipate this case, along with others pending in the district involving the MOVEit incident, will be consolidated, with the cases already transferred to Burroughs in conditional transfer order 1 (CTO-1), it said. The District of Massachusetts has stayed four other matters involving the MOVEit breach, which were reassigned according to the JPML’s transfer order: Diggs v. Progress Software Corp., Pipes v. Ipswitch, Tenner v. Progress Software and Anastasio v. Progress Software. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton for Massachusetts endorsed (docket 1:23-cv-12015) PSC’s unopposed motion to stay a ruling on Prudential’s motion to sever and transfer the venue of claims against the insurer in a MOVEit class action filed by plaintiff Christopher Arden, which names PSC, Prudential and Pension Benefit Information as defendants.