CrowdStrike is sued by fliers after massive outage disrupts air travel
5:33 pm Monday, August 05th, 2024
By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – CrowdStrike’s legal troubles from last month’s massive global computer outage deepened on Monday, as the cybersecurity company was sued by air travelers whose flights were delayed or canceled.
In a proposed class action filed in the Austin, Texas, federal court, three fliers blamed CrowdStrike’s negligence in testing and deploying its software for the outage, which also disrupted banks, hospitals and emergency lines around the world.
The plaintiffs said that as fliers scrambled to get to their destinations, many spent hundreds of dollars on lodging, meals and alternative travel, while others missed work or suffered health problems from having to sleep on the airport floor.
They said CrowdStrike should pay compensatory and punitive damages to anyone whose flight was disrupted, after technology-related flight groundings for Southwest Airlines and other carriers in 2023 made the outage “entirely foreseeable.”
CrowdStrike said in a statement: “We believe this case lacks merit and we will vigorously defend the company.”
It provided an identical statement in response to a shareholder lawsuit filed on July 31, after the company’s stock price had fallen by about one-third.
The outage stemmed from a flawed software update that crashed more than 8 million computers.
Delta Air Lines has said it may take legal action against Austin-based CrowdStrike after canceling more than 6,000 flights, at a cost of about $500 million.
On Sunday, CrowdStrike said it was neither grossly negligent nor at fault for Delta’s problems, and that the Atlanta-based carrier did not accept its offer for help.
Delta faces a U.S. Department of Transportation probe into why it needed more time than rivals to recover from the outage.
Monday’s case is del Rio et al v CrowdStrike Inc, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, No. 24-00881.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
