Judge Nixes Advocate Health Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit

Courts around the country have faced data breach lawsuits from patients whose medical records might have gotten accessed and are concerned their private information could become public. But an Illinois state court judge recently dismissed an Advocate Health Care data breach class action lawsuit due to a lack of standing by the plaintiffs because there is no evidence the information had been misused.

Circuit Court Judge James R. Murphy noted that the plaintiffs who alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) failed to demonstrate that “the information contained on the [four stolen] computers has been accessed or disseminated by the unknown third parties, or that plaintiffs have been actual victims of identity theft because of the misuse of information.”

Murphy went on to write that the precedent in Illinois and federal courts in Illinois indicated that the plaintiffs and their class action attorneys had to demonstrate a clear injury. He noted that while the complaint cited two clear cases, including Tabata v. Charleston Area Medical Center, those flew in the face of the current jurisprudence because “the claimed injury in this case is just not ‘distinct and palpable.'”

For that to have been the case, the thieves who stole the computers containing the medical records would need to have already been “actively disclosing, selling to other criminals, or otherwise misusing the data on the computers. No such allegation has been made. There is no actual or impending certainty of identity theft.”

For the other cases, the order dismissing the HIPAA class action lawsuit noted that they all were contingent on an actual injury or economic loss. Finally, the invasion of privacy claim failed because the plaintiffs had consented to the hospital system obtaining their records.

This is not the first time that the hospital system has faced a class action lawsuit regarding those stolen computers. Another lawsuit was filed in federal last year regarding a data breach that affected up to 4 million people.

The largest class action lawsuit regarding HIPAA violations involves the Department of Defense’s TRICARE, which provides medical services to veterans as well as active duty military members’ families. Again it was alleged that a storage device was stolen. Plaintiffs are seeking damages of $1,000 for each of the 4.9 million Class Members.

The plaintiffs are represented by class action attorneys Robert M. Foote, Matthew J. Herman and Kathleen C. Chavez of Foote Mielke Chavez & O’Neil LLC.

The Advocate Health Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Matias Maglio, et al., v. Advocate Health and Hospitals Corp., et al., Case No. 13-L-538, Circuit Court for the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, Kane County, Illinois.