wawa Photo: Shutterstock

A former manager at the Wawa convenience store chain has sued the company over its recent data breach, claiming it failed to adequately protect its data and did not properly notify its employees of the breach.

Shawn McGlade filed a lawsuit against Wawa on Jan. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging negligence, misrepresentation, fraud, unjust enrichment, conspiracy, and violations of Pennsylvania's Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. The claim also includes allegations that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and Pennsylvania's Minimum Wage Act over allegedly unpaid overtime wages.

Philadelphia attorney Donald Haviland of Haviland Hughes filed the lawsuit on behalf of McGlade.

In his complaint, McGlade alleged that his financial information had been accessed and used by identity thieves long before Wawa announced it had been hacked in December, and the company never took any steps to notify McGalde about the breach until the public announcement. The complaint also alleged that he had been used as a "scapegoat," and was inappropriately fired Jan. 3, in a "sheepish effort to show that it was finally taking seriously the matter of cyber security."

Since the breach was announced, a consolidated litigation against Wawa has grown to more than 20 cases. On Tuesday, the court ordered that McGlade's case be consolidated with the others, but also called for a status hearing in the lawsuit, which could hew closer to the issues raised in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's high-profile decision in Dittman v. UPMC—in which the court determined that companies have a common-law duty to protect their employees' electronic data—than the more typical data breach lawsuits.

Read the complaint: