Law firms must always be supremely cautious with private information, but you can’t help but think a firm would add that little extra attention to the task when their client has already been sued for a data breach. Not only would another leak damage the client’s reputation further, you already know that the plaintiff is exactly the sort of person willing to sue over leaks.

Goldberg Segalla finds itself on the wrong end of a lawsuit after Stephanie Hoffman, the plaintiff in a putative class action against Goldberg client Major Model Management for a breach that “exposed their personal information, including place of birth, date of birth, nationality, permanent address, cell number, email address, Social Security number, signature, passport numbers and actual copies of Social Security cards and passports,” according to Law360.

But in its motion to dismiss, Goldberg filed an agreement that contained Hoffman’s Social Security numbers, birthdate, addresses, telephone numbers, and pictures of her passport without any redaction. Everything a growing identity thief needs!

A partially redacted version was filed, but Hoffman argues that the new redactions still included problematic disclosures and that the unredacted version remained accessible for almost two months after filing.

Not to prejudge this claim, but… this was an exhibit to a motion to dismiss?!? Botching a redaction in the course of processing millions of pages of discovery is a problem but at least understandable. This is an exhibit to a motion that, by its nature, doesn’t generally require a lot of documents outside the four corners of the complaint. Whatever’s getting attached to this thing is something you’d expect the defense to be very confident is absolutely necessary. The sort of document that the attorneys should realize is riddled with the same information that the whole original lawsuit is about!

Maybe there were technical glitches that caused the redaction failure. Not that it makes it all right, but at least it wouldn’t be a matter of dropping the ball.