By Jim Utter
Director of Journalism
A pair of data pair breach lawsuits against Autobell Car Wash LLC arising over a cybersecurity incident last year have been consolidated into one class action suit.
In an order filed on Dec. 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Judge Max Cogburn Jr. granted plaintiffs’ motion to consolidate the class actions.
The original cases were Pauken v. Autobell Car Wash, LLC, No. 3:24-cv-00959 (W.D.N.C.), and Joe v. Autobell Car Wash, LLC, No. 3:24-cv-01067 (W.D.N.C.).
In the order, the judge appointed Mariya Weekes of Milberg and Jessica A. Wilkes of Federman & Sherwood as interim lead class counsel to act on behalf of the plaintiffs and appointed Scott Harris of Milberg as interim liaison counsel.
The judge also ordered plaintiffs in the consolidated action to file an operative, Consolidated Amended Complaint (CAC) within 30 days of the order. Autobell must respond to the operative CAC within 60 days.
After discovering unusual activity on its computer system, Autobell conducted an investigation and found that between April 1 and 7, 2024, the personally identifiable information (PII) of its current and former employees had been exposed in a cybersecurity incident.
The exposed PII included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, health insurance information, financial information and tax identification numbers.
Around Oct. 22, Autobell began sending affected employees a Notice of Security Incident letter informing them that certain information may have been accessed and/or acquired by an unauthorized individual.
In the letter, Autobell did not identify the individual who perpetrated the data breach, its cause, or any remedial measures undertaken to ensure such a breach did not occur again.
The first suit, filed Oct. 30, claimed the data breach at Autobell led to the exposure of PII information for more than 52,000 current and former employees. A second suit was filed in December.
Both suits claimed employees had good reason to believe their PII was safe and included statements from the company website reassuring them that such information is safeguarded with standard encryption technology.
Founded in 1969, Autobell bills itself as the largest family-owned car wash company in the U.S., with more than 80 locations in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
