A public relations consulting firm and three PR professionals are not immune from a lawsuit brought against them by former Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, whose personal information and emails were leaked to the media in an alleged hack of his computer system in 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday.

The three-judge panel found that public affairs and consulting firm Stonington Strategies, the company’s founders Nicolas D. Muzin and Joseph Allaham, and media placement expert Gregory Howard are not immune from a suit filed by Broidy in 2019. Broidy alleges the men, who he claims were hired by the Qatar government to rehabilitate the country’s image, tried to tarnish Broidy’s image because he was a critic of Qatar, and that they distributed illegally obtained, hacked information to journalists as part of that goal.