LYNN — An older Lynn woman is suing the Weymouth debt collection law firm Kream & Kream after the firm allegedly failed to redact her social security number, name, and address from public documents.
Attorney Michael Satterwhite, who is representing the woman, Linda Clayton, said the firms’ actions not only put his client at risk for identity theft, but also thousands of other individuals each year through public small claims files.
“What they’ve been doing is with the small claims cases, they have been attaching personal identifying information, and under the rule, you can’t list or provide a full social security number. They’ve been provided not only a full social security number, but providing date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and full names of these consumers,” Satterwhite said. “If anyone wanted to go into a court and say, ‘Hey, can you give me this file?’ Now they have everything about this particular individual to steal their identity.”
Satterwhite said that although Kream & Kream agreed to redact Clayton’s information from all public files in court Thursday, a class-action suit might be justified, as the firm still lists the private information of numerous individuals.
“They filed a motion in court that was heard today in front of Judge LaMothe to redact just my client’s information after I brought it to their attention that it’s universal, it’s not just a one-and-done thing. I brought five other examples to their attention, and they didn’t do anything about those other ones. They were only trying to clean up this mess because I am obviously seeking damages for my client’s information being put out there,” Satterwhite said. “This is obviously an issue. It’s a violation of the rules for redaction.”
Kream & Kream Attorney Mark Seitsinger, in a written statement, apologized for the firm’s failure to redact information from public documents. He said that the issue only applied to a small number of cases as the result of human error, and the firm is working to ensure that private information remains confidential.
“We take very seriously our obligations to comply with all relevant rules concerning personal information that might be contained within documents filed with a court. We have processes in place to review documents before they are filed to ensure that the information required to be redacted under the pertinent rules is redacted. We work diligently to make the redactions; however, human error does sometimes occur. It appears that due to human error some redactions that should have been made were not,” Seitsinger said. “We sincerely apologize for these mistakes and we are reviewing our practices with an eye to eliminating the error. We will also be proactively utilizing proper legal procedural steps in each case with the issue to guard the data in question from being accessed by the public.”
Satterwhite said that Kream & Kream’s admission of fault is not solely an acceptable response for their practices.
“His [Seitsinger’s] statement to me was that ‘people make mistakes,’ but that shouldn’t be a response from an attorney that has an obligation to redact certain things. You can’t just say ‘people make mistakes,’ and then think that that fixes the situation,” Satterwhite said. “These are not simple mistakes and seem to be a practice of the firm considering how many [cases] I found.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected]
