Ex-Employees Sue Sony

The hits just keep coming for Sony Pictures Entertainment: In the wake of threatening legal action against media outlets who publish data from the November hack, the entertainment giant is now being sued itself—by two former employees, for not protecting their data. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the pair filed a class-action lawsuit last night alleging that Sony "failed to secure its computer systems, servers and databases, despite weaknesses that it has known about for years" and "subsequently failed to timely protect confidential information of its current and former employees from law-breaking hackers." The fallout from the hack is likely to cost Sony millions in legal fees and rebuilding its network, to the point where one executive is quoted yesterday as saying, "This won't take us down. You should not be worried about the future of this studio."

Of particular issue could be the employees' medical records, which are believed to have been breached. California law places on employers what the Times calls "a strict legal obligation" to protect such records. The lawsuit seeks five years of identity theft protection, credit restoration, bank monitoring, and unspecified damages, notes TMZ. "Put simply, Sony knew about the risks it took with its past and current employees’ data," the lawsuit reads. "Sony gambled, and its employees—past and current—lost." (More Sony Pictures stories.)