Another ridiculous lawsuit. This woman is noting but a freeloader looking to be taken care of for the rest of her life on someone elses dime. What a crying shame she can't do any better than that. He parents must be real proud. Who knows...they may be proud because they are freeloaders themselves.

I hope she gets laughed right out of the courtroom just like the lawyer that was sueing the cleaners for $65 million for losing his pants.

Yet another "it's America, time to sue" thing.

RTFA, folks, and some of the other ones out there from other newswires about it

She's not asking for 54 mil because she expects to get it, and she admits it. She's asking because it generates publicity for the suit, and bad PR for Best Buy. Which is a brilliant move. And she's accomplished it; multiple tech sites are now running the story about what a crappy deal she got.

If you read her story, you'll see what kind of runaround she got, how much of her time Best Buy wasted, and how long it took for them to offer her any form of compensation. In the meantime, they lost (not erased, LOST) her private data. That data is now out in the wind, and since some of it is tax data, it's an identity thief's dream. This isn't a case of whether she should have backed up or not --it's a case of whether Best Buy should have allowed her private information to be available to the outside world, and then, covered it up and not told her until months later when the damage could have already been done. She'll be out the fees for a credit-monitoring service for a few years now. They wasted her time by running her around for months --if I ran my business on that laptop, time would be money for me, and I'd be royally ticked.

This isn't "Americans and their lawsuits". This is a case of someone knowing that Best Buy will get away with it unless everyone knows about it, and through lost sales due to bad PR, might consider changing their business practices for the better.

EDIT: One note to Europeans --you have far better consumer protection laws than we do. I wish the U.S. had the same laws --then it might not take a lawsuit to get someone's attention.

Yay for crazy people.

I am sure BB has some clause protecting them if some idiot like her leaves personally sensitive data out in the open. Guaranteed this will be thrown out of court and all she will get is lots of legal bills. Same goes for BB, but they can just write it off.

*Sigh* americans and their lawsuits. Although offering 900 is a bit of kick in the teeth. The company in this case should be doing everything they can to please the woman. But asking 54 million, even if you don't expect to get is is just asinine, an abuse of the legal system.

If BB hadn't started work on her laptop how would they know if she had personal data on it to be lost? Its not like they lost information they collected on her.

Should they contact the police for illegal material that they don't know was on the machine?

Shouldn't she suffer a 50% liability for not backing up?

Best Buy's business insurance is gonna eat it.

This is better than pants. Yes data cannot be replaced when lost. $1100 replaced by $900... how is that? They should have paid the same amount plus the hassle payment to compensate whatsoever important contained on it. That would be the nicest approach on my idea. ^_^

funny how you have to slap a huge lawsuit on a company as a way of improving it's practices. It's not exactly going to do much for Bestbuy's reputation either, if it had one that is :)

Interesting case. If in fact BB didn't inform her, she may have a case. I find this very, very hard to believe that their atty's didn't force a boilerplate contract to sign when she handed over the laptop. That is shameful, if so.

It'll settle likely for a few grand to 20K, of which she'll probably see $3-4K.

Geek Squad is the best thing to ever happen to a freelance IT guy looking for extra bucks on the side. They are a monument to incompetence.