The first wave of lawsuits against Microsoft and T-Mobile related to the recent Sidekick data loss incident are beginning to flood in.
In the first case, a T-Mobile subscriber, Maureen Thompson, is suing on behalf of her daughter, who reportedly is an aspiring singer and model.
"Defendants breached their duty to Plaintiff and the other Class members by failing to adequately insure (sic) the safety, security and availability of the data belonging to Plaintiff and the Class members," according to to the lawsuit filed by T-Mobile Sidekick owner Thompson.
There are more than 1 million Sidekick owners, though it's unknown how many users have been affected by the issue.
"Specifically, and further, Defendants negligently failed to invest the training and testing necessary to insure that the functions and operations Defendants assumed would operate to permit Plaintiff and the members of the Class to access and keep safe and secure that data they entrusted to Defendants," the lawsuit continues.
Furthermore, the lawsuit includes an open invitation for "all others similarly situation" to participate in the class action lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
In a different lawsuit, the person suing seeks monetary damages and a possible refund, while also demanding both companies fix the problem so it will not occur again.
I fully expect more lawsuits to be filed in the weeks to come, as the recent issues with Microsoft subsidiary Danger and its servers may have been caused by a server outage. A $100 rebate will be offered to Sidekick owners who've lost data and contacts -- though some owners already came forward to say the $100 rebate isn't enough.
Both Microsoft and T-Mobile continue to work the issue, with T-Mobile attempting to restore lost data. Even if all data is restored -- which is looking more and more unlikely at the moment -- the companies will still end up losing millions due to this issue.
