That is a good observation. In particular, while the plaintiff's atorneys apaprently never made the argument, there is in fact a very real and provable damage which would occur to every one of the people who elected to use the 'free credit monitoring' servcie which Brazos offered. Each of the necessary actions to secure the accounts in case of a breach involves making repeated requests to the Big Three credit monitoring services. Each inquiry lowers the account holder's credit score. Each point of lowered credit score results in less available credit, and higher interest charges in the future for such things as mortgages and other large loans. Therefore, whether someone committed fraud using the information or not, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHOSE DATA WAS LOST NOW HAS A LOWER CREDIT SCORE. And that can cause thousands of dollars in added interest costs for years and years to come.

That is a provable and tangible damage. The attorneys who handled this must have been really asleep at the wheel to not make this a class action.

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