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.

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

  • Lower Merion School District says a data breach was caused by a computer glitch
  • After $1 Million Ransom Demand, Virgin Islands Lottery Restores Operations Without Paying Hackers
  • Junior Defence Contractor Arrested For Leaking Indian Naval Secrets To Suspected Pakistani Spies
  • Mysterious leaker GangExposed outs Conti kingpins in massive ransomware data dump
  • Resource: HoganLovells Asia-Pacific Data, Privacy and Cybersecurity Guide 2025
  • Class action settlement following ransomware attack will cost Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center about $52 million
  • Comstar LLC agrees to corrective action plan and fine to settle HHS OCR charges
  • Australian ransomware victims now must tell the government if they pay up
  • U.S. Sanctions Cloud Provider ‘Funnull’ as Top Source of ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams
  • Victoria’s Secret takes down website after security incident

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

  • Fears Grow Over ICE’s Reach Into Schools
  • Resource: HoganLovells Asia-Pacific Data, Privacy and Cybersecurity Guide 2025
  • She Got an Abortion. So A Texas Cop Used 83,000 Cameras to Track Her Down.
  • Why AI May Be Listening In on Your Next Doctor’s Appointment
  • Watch out for activist judges trying to deprive us of our rights to safe reproductive healthcare
  • Nebraska Bans Minor Social Media Accounts Without Parental Consent
  • Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans

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.