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The son of a woman who died of COVID-19 in an Illinois hospital last year is taking class action against the hospital, saying it allowed her sensitive data to be hacked, resulting in fraudulent transactions on her account after her death.
Plaintiff Richard Scardina, the executor of the Estate of Antoinette Scardina, filed the class action lawsuit against Advocate Christ Medical Center and its owner, Advocate Aurora Health Inc., Saturday in an Illinois federal court.
Scardina says his mom entered the Advocate Christ Medical Center for COVID-19 on December 6, and was a patient for six weeks before she passed away in January 2021.
The hospital was the only place she shared her private medical information.
Between February and March, while Scardina was still grieving his mother’s death, he says he got a data breach notification alerting him that his mother’s information was exposed “due to the hospital’s insecure data systems.”
He says a series of suspicious incidents occurred throughout his mom’s accounts, impacting both him and his sister.
“Antoinette’s bank account was hacked for the first time in 34 years and $1,000 was removed from the bank account,” he says. Both he and his sister also received fraudulent transactions on their accounts. To mitigate his harm, Scardina froze all of his credit accounts.
As a result, Scardina is suing Advocate Christ Medical Center for its failure to exercise reasonable care in securing sensitive personal data.
He says, throughout 2020 and 2021, Advocate Aurora, owner of Advocate Christ Medical Center, had a series of four data breaches.
“Defendants’ history of data breaches means Defendants should have known how to prevent a data breach and/or mitigate harm from a data breach,” he says.
He’s looking to represent anyone who had their private information compromised as a result of the data breaches discovered between 2020 through 2021, plus an Illinois Subclass.
He’s seeking certification of the class action, damages, an order forcing the company to strengthen its data systems, fees, costs and a jury trial.
The Advocate Christ Medical Center class action alleges negligence, breach of implied contract, unjust enrichment, violation of Illinois’s Personal Information Protection Act, Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Data breach class action lawsuits can sometimes end in settlements.
Yesterday, Dominion Dental and other Dominion National defendants have agreed to a data breach settlement worth nearly $4.7 million benefiting individuals whose information may have been compromised during a security incident that may have begun as early as 2010.
Has your data ever been leaked in a breach or hack? Let us know in the comments!
The plaintiff is represented by Stacy M. Bardo of Bardo Law, P.C. and Jason S. Rathod and Nicholas A. Migliaccio of Migliaccio & Rathod LLP
The Advocate Aurora Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Estate of Antoinette Scardina, v. Advocate Aurora Health Inc., Case No. 1:21-cv-03811, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
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