PlayStation Network Hacking Lawsuit Tossed Out

Last year’s PlayStation Network hack proved a torrid time for Sony’s platform – but it was worsened by the knee-jerk reactions from some corners of the press. Cast your minds back to the hazy days of April 2011, and you’ll recall headlines regarding credit card fraud, identity theft, and more. In reality, while there was no doubt that the PSN was breached, there was probably never any valuable information stolen.

Still, that didn’t stop a group of opportunists from taking the platform holder to court over the outage. Thankfully, after roughly 18 months, their case has been dismissed – and Sony has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

US District Judge Anthony Battaglia tossed out the charges including negligence, restitution, and unjust enrichment. He also cleared the company of violations of California consumer protection laws "because none of the named plaintiffs subscribed to premium PSN services, and thus received the PSN services free of cost”.

Battaglia went on to throw out a bailment charge because "plaintiffs did not allege that Sony was in any way involved with the Data Breach”. Additionally, the judge noted that all PSN users signed a Privacy Policy that included "clear admonitory language that Sony's security was not perfect [and therefore] no reasonable consumer could have been deceived”.

Battaglia did give the class the option to amend its claim, but we suspect this is the last we’ll be hearing about the PSN outage for a while. Thank goodness for that.