Cushman Hit With Class Action Suit Following Data Breach

If it wasn’t bad enough that Cushman & Wakefield was targeted in a cyberattack that reportedly compromised more than 300,000 accounts, now it’s being sued over the data breach.

Commercial tenant Michelle Milewski filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the brokerage on Friday, the New York Post reported. The federal complaint accuses the company of failing to protect past and present clients’ personal information.

The lawsuit stems from a recent cyberattack led by ShinyHunters, which targeted Cushman with a “pay or leak” extortion threat, according to Have I Been Pwned. The compromised data included mail addresses, job titles, names, phone numbers and physical addresses, according to the site, affecting more than 310,000 accounts.

The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, claims Cushman’s succumbing to a voice phishing effort exposed “a litany of highly sensitive personal identifiable information about its current and former clients and tenants.” Cushman was allegedly negligent by failing to make security practice updates before the breach occurred.

Milewski claimed the data breach resulted in spam and scam emails, text messages and phone calls, causing anxiety and sleep disruption.

A spokesperson for the brokerage said the lawsuit was “baseless.”

“The ShinyHunters data incident referenced was very limited in scope and we’re in the process of communicating to any clients that were impacted,” the spokesperson said, adding the company did not engage with the hackers.

That isn’t the brokerage’s only recent legal squabble. Last month, Cushman filed a lawsuit against Sotheby’s, alleging breach of a commission agreement and claiming the brokerage is owed $10.2 million related to the $510 million sale of 1334 York Avenue, Sotheby’s former headquarters, to Weill Cornell Medicine.

Cushman claimed it is entitled to a 2 percent commission on the sale, citing a separate agreement inked during the 2023 signing of a 200,000-square-foot lease it brokered for Weill Cornell.

— Holden Walter-Warner