A federal judge has dismissed two data-breach class actions—filed by plaintiffs whose personal information was hacked from a payroll company—because no apparent identity-theft-related crimes occurred as a result.

On March 13, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III of the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted defendant Paytime Harrisburg's motion to dismiss the class actions Storm v. Paytime and Holt v. Paytime, with a total of 233,000 proposed class members. In dismissing the cases, Jones ruled the plaintiffs did not have standing to file suit.

Jones said that while data breaches are serious matters and are increasing exponentially nationwide, the plaintiffs in the cases before him did not suffer any theft of funds from their bank accounts or misuse of their Social Security numbers.