Walt Disney Co. has been hit with a class action lawsuit accusing the Burbank-based entertainment giant of negligence, breach of implied contract and other misconduct in connection with a massive data breach that occurred earlier this year.

Plaintiff Scott Margel submitted the complaint on Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Disney and Disney California Adventure. The 32-page document also accuses the company of violating privacy laws by not doing enough to prevent or notify victims of the extent of the leak.

The class members, estimated to number in the thousands, are described in the complaint as individuals who gave “highly sensitive personal information” to Disney in connection with their employment at the company — information that was allegedly compromised in the breach.

Representatives of Disney did not immediately respond Friday to The Times’ request for comment.

The lawsuit cites an article published in September by the Wall Street Journal, which reported that a hacking group known as NullBulge publicly released data spanning more than 18,800 spreadsheets, 13,000 PDFs and 44 million internal messages sent via the workplace communication platform Slack.

According to the Journal, the compromised Slack messages contained sensitive information belonging to Disney cruise employees, including passport numbers, visa details, birthplaces and physical addresses; at least one spreadsheet listed the names, addresses and phone numbers of some Disney Cruise Line passengers. The publication later reported that Disney planned to stop using Slack after the breach.

The plaintiff and class members “remain, even today, in the dark regarding which particular data was stolen, the particular malware used, and what steps are being taken, if any, to secure their [personal information] going forward,” the complaint reads.

The plaintiff and class members “are, thus, left to speculate as to where their [data] ended up, who has used it and for what potentially nefarious purposes.”

In July, NullBulge said that it had leaked roughly 1.2 terabytes of Disney data in rebuke of the company’s treatment of artists, “approach to AI” and “pretty blatant disregard for the consumer.” The self-proclaimed hacktivists told CNN that they were able to penetrate Disney’s system thanks to “a man with Slack access who had cookies.”

A Disney spokesperson said in a statement at the time that the company was “investigating this matter.”

Margel is demanding that Disney take steps to reinforce its security system and educate class members about the risks associated with the breach. The plaintiff is also seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.

Electric vehicle maker Rivian saw its shares dip Friday after the Irvine-based company cut its production targets amid ongoing supply issues.

Citing a shortage of a component used to build its electric pickups, sport utility vehicles and vans, Rivian said production could drop as much as 18% this year at its lone U.S. assembly plant.

Rivian did not specify the part that is in low supply but noted that the shortage has become more acute in recent weeks.

The company now forecasts its full-year production will be between 47,000 and 49,000 vehicles, down from an earlier estimate of 57,000. During the most recent quarter, Rivian produced 13,157 vehicles and delivered 10,018, falling short of analysts’ expectations.

Shares of Rivian ended the day at $10.44, down 3.2%. The company’s stock has been battered since the start of the year, falling by more than 50% amid underwhelming financial reports. In the second quarter this year, Rivian posted a net loss of $1.46 billion compared with a loss of about $1.12 billion during the same period a year earlier. The company is scheduled to announce its third-quarter earnings next month.

Rivian received a lifeline in June when Volkswagen agreed to a massive investment in the company that is expected to total $5 billion. Rivan has nonetheless continued to struggle in the face of dropping demand for electric vehicles and other supply chain issues that forced the company to pause its production of commercial vans for Amazon.com in August.

Early this year, the automaker announced a 10% cut in its workforce that sent stocks plummeting 25% in one day. The pool of interested wealthy buyers who don’t already own an electric vehicle is shrinking, analysts said, while the broader market weighs the advantages and feasibility of switching to electric.

The average car buyer is not likely to be able to afford a Rivian vehicle, and concerns remain about charging infrastructure and the distance vehicles can drive on a single charge. Rivian’s R1T electric pickup truck starts at around $70,000; its R1S SUV starts at nearly $75,000.

With sleek design and outdoorsy features, Rivian’s vehicles garnered much attention from analysts and attracted investors such as Amazon and Volkswagen. The company exceeded expectations during its initial public offering of stock in 2021, ending its first day of trading valued at nearly $88 billion.

The production issues announced this week could get in the way of Rivian’s goal of achieving positive gross profits by the fourth quarter of this year. According to analysts, the company’s gross margins are expected to remain in negative territory in the final three months of 2024.

In April 2022, a Starbucks barista and union organizer was invited to meet with the company’s upper management in Long Beach. During the meeting, the employee raised several concerns, including charges of unfair labor practices the company faced.

Howard Schultz, who had just begun his third stint as the company’s chief executive, became irritated and shot back: “If you’re not happy at Starbucks, you can go work for another company.”

Now, the National Labor Relations Board has found that Schultz acted unlawfully by inviting an employee to quit after they raised issues related to unionization.

The board’s decision, issued Oct. 2, ordered Starbucks to cease and desist from implying employees could be fired for engaging in protected activities such as union organizing. The company must also post a notice of employee rights at all of the Long Beach stores from which employees attended the meeting with Schultz.

In its decision, the board wrote that it has “long held unlawful employers’ statements that employees dissatisfied with working conditions should quit rather than try to improve them through union activity.”

Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the NLRB’s Long Beach decision, which comes as the coffee chain has changed its stance on unionization efforts.

Until this year, the company had ardently resisted the campaign to organize its workers, which began in 2021. Federal labor regulators found Starbucks repeatedly violated labor laws by disciplining and firing workers involved in unionizing activity, shutting down stores and stalling contract negotiations.

But in February the company announced it had agreed with the union behind the campaign, Starbucks Workers United, to streamline negotiations on contracts and take a more neutral approach when workers at unionized stores took steps to organize.

Earlier this week, the unionization drive reached a milestone, when a store in Washington became the 500th U.S. location to unionize. Starbucks Workers United has credited the company’s new posture for a wave of some 100 Starbucks stores that have unionized since March.

“We’re happy to see the NLRB continue to stand up for workers and our legal right to organize. At the same time, we’re focused on the future and are proud to be charting a new path with the company,” Michelle Eisen, national organizing committee co-chair at Starbucks Workers United and a barista at a Buffalo, N.Y., store, said in an emailed statement about the decision on Schultz’s comment.

Starbucks spokesperson Phil Gee said the company disagreed with the decision, and that sessions such as the one held with baristas in Long Beach and other locations across the country aimed to gather input from workers.

“Our focus continues to be on training and supporting our managers to ensure respect of our partners’ rights to organize and on progressing negotiations towards ratified store contracts this year,” Gee said in emailed statement Friday.

Beyond charges from federal regulators and other fallout from its earlier anti-union approach, the company is grappling with a change in leadership, softening demand, boycotts over its perceived support for Israel, pressures from activist investors and criticism that it has strayed far from its roots with menus of overly complicated items that take too long to serve. Sales in North American stores dipped 2%, and sales in the rest of the world dipped 7%, the company reported in July.

Schultz stepped down last year and in August the company named a new chief executive, Brian Niccol, to replace Schultz’s successor. Niccol has said he’ll stick with the company’s new position on unions.

“I deeply respect the right of partners to choose, through a fair and democratic process, to be represented by a union,” Niccol wrote in a letter addressed to union members and posted on the company’s website last week. “I am committed to making sure we engage constructively and in good faith with the union and the partners it represents.”

Niccol penned the remarks in response to a letter signed by hundreds of workers who serve as bargaining delegates from various stores for the union. The workers reached out ahead of a scheduled bargaining session, the first of Niccol’s tenure.

Still, workers’ views on whether to unionize is not unanimous.

As employees at the store in Washington were voting to join the union, workers at a Starbucks in Hollywood on Monday chose not to join. Also on that day, a store in Salt Lake City failed to secure votes needed to win union recognition.

The NLRB has conducted a total of 602 union elections at Starbucks stores, with 102 of them falling short and 500 passing, according to NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado. In California, 61 stores have held union elections and 41 of them have had their bargaining units recognized by the labor board.

At the Hollywood store, pro-union workers had been optimistic ahead of the vote count, which came out 14 opposed to unionization to 6 favoring it. The workers had reached out to union officials in February, frustrated by problems of chronic understaffing.

Mikey Martinez, a shift supervisor who has worked at the store for more than five years, said he was fearful when he and co-workers began talking about unionizing. But his initial concerns about backlash dissipated after managers held a meeting about a month ago to explain the company’s new, more neutral stance.

It was “really good to be able to speak about it without checking behind our shoulders to see if anyone is listening,” Martinez said.