Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. (Courtesy photo)

The Massachusetts attorney general is objecting to the proposed Equifax data breach settlement, calling it an "end run" by the Atlanta-based credit bureau to avoid ongoing litigation in her state.

In an amicus brief supporting other objectors to the proposed $1.4 billion settlement, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey asked Chief Judge Thomas Thrash of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to reject the settlement unless it's modified to ensure that Massachusetts' case against Equifax can proceed.

Healey opposes any inference that Massachusetts is bound by the proposed settlement. She cited an ongoing civil enforcement action filed in Massachusetts shortly after Equifax went public with news of the breach in September 2017.

That suit, filed in Suffolk Superior State Court, contends that Equifax's 2017 data breach imperiled the personal and financial information of an estimated 147 million consumers in violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act and the states data protection law. That litigation seeks unspecified civil penalties, consumer restitution and other unspecified relief.

Equifax has unsuccessfully attempted to dismiss or stay the Massachusetts litigation, which is in discovery, according to Healey.

Healey said her office was formally notified of the proposed settlement last August. "At no point prior thereto was Massachusetts consulted, invited, or permitted to provide any input to the terms of the proposed settlement agreement," she said.

A hearing to approve the settlement and $77.5 million in legal fees requested by the consumer class counsel is set for Thursday.

Equifax co-lead counsel David Balser and Phyllis Sumner of King & Spalding in Atlanta, couldn't be reached for comment. Co-lead counsel for the consumer class—Ken Canfield of Atlanta's Doffermyre Shields Canfield & Knowles; Amy Keller of Dicello Levitt Gutzler in Chicago and Norman Siegel of Stueve Siegel Hanson in Kansas City, Missouri—also couldn't be reached.

Attorneys general in 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as well the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were involved in negotiations with Equifax over a proposed settlement and will collectively benefit from the final deal, Healey said.

But she said that Massachusetts or Indiana joined in that multistate agreement and played no role in negotiating its terms. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill filed a separate amicus brief on Dec. 5 with similar objections to the proposed settlement.

Healey said she and Hill requested that Equifax and counsel for the consumer class modify language in the proposed settlement to "make clear" it would not include their two states.

During that call, Equifax counsel "expressed an unwillingness to make the modification," Healey said.

In emails Healey's office exchanged between Nov. 15 and Dec. 4 with counsel for Equifax and the consumer class, Massachusetts again requested that they modify the release language to make clear it would not include the two states' claims, Henley said. Counsel for both Equifax and the plaintiff class refused to to do so, Healey said.

As a result, Massachusetts has been placed "in an unfair position vis-a-vis her sister states, which separately settled with [Equifax] and negotiated a separate release for their own sovereign claims," she said.