A Missouri federal court has thrown out a consumer class action lawsuit against Express Scripts over a 2008 data breach.

“In dismissing the lawsuit, Magistrate Judge Frederick Buckles reiterated a position that has been taken by a number of other judges in similar cases in the past: Without any actual harm being done, there can be no damages sought,” writes Computerworld’s Jaikumar Vijayan.

“Though numerous other cases have ended the same way, some courts have begun to show a willingness to at least hear the sort of claims raised… in October [for] instance, a U.S. District Court judge in Maine asked the state’s highest court to weigh in on the question of whether the time and effort spent in mitigating the fallout from a data breach constituted a cognizable injury under Maine law,” Vijayan writes.

Click here to read the Computerworld story.