Quebec dealers who were forced to return to paper to draft their contracts due to the cyberattack against the software of American supplier CDK have filed a request for class action in the hope of being compensated.
The Journal reported last week that 150 of the 890 car dealerships in Quebec are the collateral victims of a large-scale act of computer hacking. Unable to make orders and use their usual tools, they had to fall back on paper and pencil to continue operating.
Sensing the opportunity, lawyers took up the case and a request to initiate a class action was filed in the last few days at the Montreal courthouse.
In addition to automobile dealerships affected by the CDK outage, the petition concerns “all individuals and entities in Canada who suffered damages and/or incurred expenses” due to the service interruption caused by the cyberattack.
They are demanding financial compensation and that the company, which has its headquarters in Austin, Texas, be ordered to pay damages.
Wasted time, wasted money
The applicant, a certain “Dominique” whose rest of his personal information was redacted in the version of the document which is public, found himself at the forefront of the CDK breakdown.
He went to the Chevrolet dealership in L’Île-des-Sœurs on June 19, the day the interruption began, to take possession of a vehicle. When he arrived there, he was told that he had got the date wrong and that he had to come back the next day under the pretext that the seller with whom he was dealing was not working that day, it is recounted in the request for collective action.
However, the dealership called Dominique the next morning to inform him that a breakdown was affecting his systems and that the appointment would therefore have to be canceled. He was also informed that it was not possible at this time to know when the appointment could be rescheduled.
“In anticipation of the recovery of his vehicle, the applicant had already started paying insurance premiums […]. His insurance costs him approximately $1,580 plus taxes annually,” it is alleged in the request, which also argues that the applicant wasted time and that his personal data was compromised.
Still not resolved…
The American company announced a few days ago that it had been the victim of a cyberattack forcing the shutdown of its systems, and a day later, of another incident. A week later, the situation is still not resolved, and many dealers are still having problems.
“We have successfully placed a small group of dealers on our dealer management system, and once validation is complete, we will begin to gradually onboard others,” CDK spokeswoman Lisa Finney said in an email, adding that the company is working on implementing additional applications and that a resource center has been created to “support the sales and service efforts” of affected dealers.
– With the collaboration of Francis Halin
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