Facebook Wins Dismissal of Healthcare Info Privacy Class Action Lawsuit

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A federal judge has put an end to a privacy rights class action lawsuit against Facebook and the healthcare institutions behind several informational websites.

U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila dismissed the claims brought by plaintiff Winston Smith and three anonymous plaintiffs, finding that by accepting the Facebook user agreement, they had consented to the very data collection that they claimed was unlawful.

Judge Davila also determined that his California federal court has no jurisdiction over the seven healthcare website defendants.

In their original Facebook privacy rights class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that Facebook unlawfully collects its users’ sensitive medical information from healthcare websites run by the other defendants.

These websites include Cancer.net, run by defendant American Society of Clinical Oncology, Cancer.org, run by defendant American Cancer Society, and other informational websites run by medical facilities like the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Texas – MD Anderson Cancer Center.

The plaintiffs say these websites can use embedded code provided by Facebook to allow Facebook users to “Like” or “Share” website content. Facebook can then use this embedded code to track users’ activity on these third-party websites, then use information about that activity to sell marketing services.

Plaintiffs argued that the defendants’ handling and selling of the data gleaned from these websites violates laws that govern the handling of personal medical information – laws like the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

Facebook’s previous attempt at dismissal was based on an argument that the plaintiffs failed to allege any concrete and particularized harm that may have resulted from Facebook’s tracking of user activity. Plaintiffs countered that Facebook’s selling of user data is itself an invasion of privacy that constitutes a real and actionable harm.

In Judge Davila’s current order of dismissal, he determined that Facebook’s data collection is not governed by laws that control the collection of sensitive medical information. The data in question consists only of purely technical information from the user’s web browser – information like IP addresses, cookies, and the like, not the sensitive medical information that laws like HIPAA were created to protect.

Judge Davila rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that Facebook’s policies on information collection are too vague to be enforceable.

“The meaning of ‘information’ might be broad – it could include any data transmitted when the visitor’s browser connects to Facebook’s servers, including cookies, referer headers, and all the parts that combine to form a browser fingerprint,” the judge wrote. “But, as Defendants point out, ‘a contractual term is not ambiguous just because it is broad.’”

Judge Davila also found that his court has no personal jurisdiction over the healthcare defendants since they were not based in California. Contrary to plaintiffs’ arguments, the fact that these websites sent user data to California-based Facebook does not create personal jurisdiction over them, the judge concluded.

The judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice, foreclosing any opportunity they may have had to amend their claims.

Smith and the anonymous plaintiffs are represented by Paul R. Kiesel, Jeffrey A. Koncius and Nicole Ramirez of Kiesel Law LLP, Amy Gunn of The Simon Law Firm PC, Andrew Lyskowki of Bergmanis Law Firm LLC, Jay Barnes and Rod Chapel of Barnes & Associates, Stephen M. Gorny and Chris Dandurand of The Gorny Law Firm LC, Bary R. Eichen, Evan J. Rosenberg and Ashley A. Sith of Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy.

The Facebook Health Data Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Smith, et al. v. Facebook Inc., et al., Case No. 5:16-cv-01282, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Dec. 6, 2018, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel determined that a lower California court made the right decision to scrap a Facebook class action lawsuit brought forward by users who claimed that the social media company illegally shared data about users’ visits to medical websites.