A federal judge ruled in favour of nine former Sony employees who sued the company for their stolen data, which was exposed by the 2014 hacking incident.
The incident said to have revealed the salary, health data, social security numbers and other sensitive information of several employees.
The hack by Guardians of Peace demanded cancellation of release of movie, The Interview, also leaked embarrassing email exchanges between Sony Pictures Entertainment chief Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin that made mockery of Obama’s race.
Later, US officials blamed North Korean hackers for the incident, as the movie had a humorous storyline surrounding a plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The Judge ruled out Sony‘s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit and said that plaintiffs could pursue claims that Sony was negligent and violated California confidentiality law by not taking enough measures to stop the theft caused by the incident.
Sony is now being blamed of making poor business decision as it failed to stop the cyber attack despite facing similar incident with the PlayStation video game network in 2011.
The former employees claimed that the negligence in the part of the company financially hampered them a lot, as they had to boost their credit monitoring in order to stay clear of identity theft.
Reuters cited lawyer Michael Sobol representing the plaintiffs as saying: "We are pleased that the court has properly recognised the harm to Sony’s employees resulting from their private information escaping their employer’s protection."
