At least one lawyer suing Equifax on behalf of consumers disputes the notion that they haven't suffered actual harm and may lack standing to sue. "The notion that no one is harmed yet is premature," Andrew Friedman, with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington, said in a phone interview. "People already have out-of-pocket damages for additional credit monitoring and for credit freezes. We don't know what's happening with the data." Friedman represents a group of plaintiffs in a case filed Sept. 8 in Atlanta who accused Equifax of acting negligently and violating District of Columbia consumer protection law as well as the FCRA. Any settlement with Equifax would have to include many years of credit monitoring for consumers because the stolen data could be misused years from now, he said.