DataBreaches.Net

Menu
  • About
  • Breach Notification Laws
  • Privacy Policy
  • Transparency Report
Menu

Federal Court Dismisses Data Breach Litigation

Posted on April 10, 2022 by Dissent

The following news item refers to litigation related to a data leak discovered by Dutch researcher Jelle Ursem that was reported in collaboration with DataBreaches.net.

Shing Tse and Kristin L. Bryan of Squire Patton Boggs write:

Recently, a federal court in Kansas joined a number of other courts in finding that allegations of future, speculative harm unadorned with actual theft or misuse of personal information are insufficient to establish Article III standing.

In Ex rel Situated v. Med-Data Inc., Case No. 21-2301-DDC-GEB, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60555 (D. Kan. Mar. 31, 2022), Plaintiff C.C. (“Plaintiff”) filed a class action lawsuit against Defendant Med-Data (“Med-Data”), a health care provider, arising out of a data event in which Plaintiff’s and tens of thousands of others’ patient protected health information (“PHI”) and personally identifiable information (“PII”) was disclosed. Plaintiff was a patient of one of Med-Data’s “business associates” and provided her PII and PHI to Med-Data as a result. On or around March 31, 2021, Plaintiff received a notice of the data event, notifying her that her PII and PHI were “uploaded to a public facing website” and the data “was stolen, compromised, and wrongfully disseminated without authorization.” The impacted information included names, social security numbers, physical addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, medical conditions, and diagnoses.

Read more at The National Law Review.

DataBreaches.net was surprised to read that the data had been “stolen, compromised, and wrongfully disseminated without authorization,” because we had no knowledge of any of that and Med-Data’s disclosure had not suggested any of that.  Med-Data’s disclosure had indicated that an employee had uploaded folders to publicly available folders, and they had been alerted to the exposure by an independent journalist.

Was the plaintiff trying to suggest that an erroneous exposure discovered by a researcher who then notified the entity equivalent to “stolen, compromised, and wrongfully disseminated?” Or did the plaintiff believe that because the leak was shared with a journalist (DataBreaches) for notification and reporting purposes, that constituted “stolen, compromised, and wrongfully disseminated without authorization?”

The complaint did not attach a copy of the letter that allegedly informed them that the data had been stolen, etc., so we could not see the notification the plaintiff received and whether it was from Med-Data itself or from the plaintiff’s healthcare provider.

Unsurprisingly, Med-Data challenged the complaint and pointed out that there was no evidence of any theft, misuse, or dissemination.

The case has been dismissed for lack of standing.

Related posts:

  • TeamGhostShell posts “master list” of 548 leaks (so far)
  • Good Luck Explaining to HHS Why Your PHI is in GitHub’s Vault for the Next 1,000 Years
  • Remember your baby’s newborn pictures? They may still be online.
Category: Health DataSubcontractorU.S.

Post navigation

← Inside the Bitcoin Bust That Took Down the Web’s Biggest Child Abuse Site
War stirs up cybercrime →

2 thoughts on “Federal Court Dismisses Data Breach Litigation”

  1. Adam Shostack says:
    April 10, 2022 at 1:08 pm

    Maybe they’re categorizing the employee’s act of uploading the data to a public-facing website as theft and wrongful dissemination?

    1. Dissent says:
      April 10, 2022 at 8:38 pm

      I don’t know. I wish they had appended the notification letter they had received so we could see what they had actually been told about the breach — so we could see if this was just their interpretation of what Med-Data described or if perhaps some doctor’s office sent them a notification that framed the incident that way.

Comments are closed.

Now more than ever

"Stand with Ukraine:" above raised hands. The illustration is in blue and yellow, the colors of Ukraine's flag.

Search

Browse by Categories

Recent Posts

  • Northern Light Health patients affected by security incident at Compumedics; 10 healthcare entities affected
  • Privacy commissioner reviewing reported Ontario Health atHome data breach
  • CMS warns Medicare providers of fraud scheme
  • Ex-student charged with wave of cyber attacks on Sydney uni
  • Detaining Hackers Before the Crime? Tamil Nadu’s Supreme Court Approves Preventive Custody for Cyber Offenders
  • Potential Cyberattack Scrambles Columbia University Computer Systems
  • 222,000 customer records allegedly from Manhattan Parking Group leaked
  • Breaches have consequences (sometimes) (1)
  • Kansas City Man Pleads Guilty for Hacking a Non-Profit
  • British national “IntelBroker” charged with causing $25 million in damages; U.S. seeks his extradition from France

No, You Can’t Buy a Post or an Interview

This site does not accept sponsored posts or link-back arrangements. Inquiries about either are ignored.

And despite what some trolls may try to claim: DataBreaches has never accepted even one dime to interview or report on anyone. Nor will DataBreaches ever pay anyone for data or to interview them.

Want to Get Our RSS Feed?

Grab it here:

https://databreaches.net/feed/

RSS Recent Posts on PogoWasRight.org

  • Germany Wants Apple, Google to Remove DeepSeek From Their App Stores
  • Supreme Court upholds Texas law requiring age verification on porn sites
  • Justices nix Medicaid ‘right’ to choose doctor, defunding Planned Parenthood in South Carolina
  • European Commission publishes its plan to enable more effective law enforcement access to data
  • Sacred Secrets: The Biblical Case for Privacy and Data Protection
  • Microsoft’s Departing Privacy Chief Calls for Regulator Outreach
  • Nestle USA Settles Suit Over Job-Application Medical Questions

Have a News Tip?

Email: Tips[at]DataBreaches.net

Signal: +1 516-776-7756

Contact Me

Email: info[at]databreaches.net

Mastodon: Infosec.Exchange/@PogoWasRight

Signal: +1 516-776-7756

DMCA Concern: dmca[at]databreaches.net
© 2009 – 2025 DataBreaches.net and DataBreaches LLC. All rights reserved.