ATLANTA - A class action lawsuit was filed against the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company in response to a recent data breach at the company's dairy company, Fairlife.

A group of current and former Coca-Cola and Fairlife employees are suing over the ransomware attack, saying their personal information was not secured properly or safely.

Channel 2 Action News reported when Coca-Cola announced the breach at Fairlife in mid-July.


Fairlife is a dairy company owned by Coca-Cola, which produces and bottles dairy products for the Georgia-grown beverage giant.

The company returned to operation about two weeks later, saying that the availability of its Fairlife products was not substantively affected by the breach.

Coke said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the ransomware attack had happened on July 16.


The members of the class include former and current employees, according to the lawsuit.

The named, main plaintiff is Christina Montalvo.

Court filings for the case say the data breach included  highly sensitive  private information of the affected employees, which they said  represents a gold mine for data thieves, including but not limited to names and Social Security numbers. 

Due to the ransomware attack, the lawsuit claims its class members are at imminent, immediate and continued risk of losses and harm due to the potential identity theft and other fraud that could be committed using their private information.

The filing also says that the Coca-Cola Company and Fairlife  failed to properly maintain and implement security practices  for the network and systems that contained private information, such as the employees' data, collected for employment documents.

 If Defendants had properly monitored their networks, systems and email accounts, they would have discovered the breach sooner,  the lawsuit alleges.

The plaintiffs say in their lawsuit that Anubis, a ransomware group that claimed responsibility for the breach on July 20, said it had taken a terabyte of confidential dat

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