A woman in Lake Cowichan is awaiting her settlement following a massive class-action lawsuit that’s been years in the making.
Sharon Mcdonald was one of more than 900,000 claimants who came forward to get a slice of a multi-million-dollar deal reached by LifeLabs last fall. The company was hit by a cyberattack in 2019 in which millions of people had their personal information compromised.
Mcdonald says she recently got an email saying she’ll soon be receiving a grand total of $7.86, but if she opts to get a cheque instead of a direct deposit, it’ll be $5.86 due to a $2 processing fee.
“I just went, ‘What’s the point of a class-action lawsuit, if it doesn’t benefit the people?’ It benefitted the lawyers. They made money. You can be darn sure they made money. They can’t feel very good about this. I just had to laugh at it. I said, ‘I can’t believe this.’ It’s laughable. I’m sure everyone felt the same way.”
Mcdonald adds it will take up to three weeks until she gets her money.
“It just boggled my mind that this is what a class action is all about. I don’t know what I can buy for $5. Maybe I’ll go buy an ice cream.”
But, Mcdonald is clear — she didn’t expect to get rich off of this.
“I believe I saw something about $50 or $100, but I mean even that isn’t as insulting as $5.”
The $50-$150 range initially surfaced when the lawsuit was settled, but with legal fees and taxes, that total was going to be slashed.
Mcdonald says the whole experience, which has dragged on for five years, wasn’t worth it for her and she feels trapped.
“I’ve lost faith in the system. I thought this was a good idea, that the [lawsuit] should be started. They shouldn’t get away scot-free for what happened,” she explained.
“But I have to deal with LifeLabs, we don’t have a lot of choices. What are my options? I can’t say, ‘No, I’m not going to use them,’ because that’s all that there is, from what I know.”
LifeLabs has said the payouts are so small because it didn’t think so many people would file claims, however, more than 900,000 did.
“What did they expect? LifeLabs is a huge corporation. There were lots of people who were affected by this,” added a frustrated Mcdonald. “It is what it is and there’s nothing that can change, but it just isn’t right.”
In 2020, B.C.’s privacy commissioner ordered LifeLabs to improve its safeguards around personal health information and to collect less from its clients.