AshleyMadison.com is fighting to block thousands of internal documents exposed in last year’s data breach from getting into court, where plaintiffs attorneys want to use emails between the company’s executives and outside counsel to allege the extramarital-affair website was engaged in widespread fraud on consumers.
Plaintiffs lawyers claim that Ashley Madison, legally referred to as Avid Dating Life Inc., and its parent company, Avid Life Media Inc., created fake female profiles to lure men into paying for access to the site. Plaintiffs seek to bolster their consolidated complaint due June 3 with emails between Avid and lawyers at Barnes & Thornburg from January 2012 to September 2015. Those emails, say plaintiffs, show “how defendants worked together to commit fraud,” according to court documents filed last month by co-lead plaintiffs attorney John Driscoll.
