Lawsuit Over Cushman & Wakefield Data Breach Dropped

Cushman & Wakefield is off the hook in a class-action lawsuit after less than a month.

Commercial tenant Michelle Milewski voluntarily dismissed her potential class-action case against the brokerage stemming from a recent cyberattack that reportedly compromised more than 300,000 accounts, Bisnow reported. No reason was given for the case’s dismissal.

It was filed without prejudice, meaning the allegations could be brought back to the surface down the road. Both sides are expected to front their own legal costs.

Attorneys for both parties did not respond to requests for comment from the publication.

Mileweski filed her federal complaint in mid-May, accusing the company of failing to protect past and present clients’ personal information.

The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, claimed 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.” The suit accused the firm of negligence 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 lawsuit followed a cyberattack led by ShinyHunters and Qilin, which targeted Cushman with a “pay or leak” extortion threat, according to Have I Been Pwned. ShinyHunters allegedly threatened to put the records on a dark web leak site unless the firm made contact and paid a ransom; Cushman said it did not make that contact.

The compromised data included mail addresses, job titles, names, phone numbers and physical addresses, according to the site, affecting more than 310,000 accounts; Cybernews reported more than 500,000 breached records.

In April, 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