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A patient is suing Indianapolis-based Community Health Network in a lawsuit that seeks class-action status for all customers harmed by an alleged data breach in February.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the Marion Commercial Court on behalf of plaintiff Kathy Sloan and claims the the health network failed to take necessary precautions to secure private patient information.
General counsel for Community Health did not immediately respond to The Indiana Lawyer’s request for comment.
According to the lawsuit, Community Health learned in May that private information was potentially accessed by an unauthorized third party after discovering that one of its employees’ email addresses was accessed without authorization.
An internal investigation was launched and found that the private information was potentially acquired between Feb. 25 and 26 of this year, according to the lawsuit.
The health network posted a notice on its website informing patients of the breach on July 7, the complaint says. The lawsuit does not provide an estimate of how many people may have been impacted.
Sloan is now suing the Community Health for negligence, breach of implied contract, unjust enrichment x and invasion of privacy, arguing the health network should have known its data security obligations given the “substantial increase in cyberattacks and/or data breaches in recent years,” including at high-profile companies such as Facebook and Microsoft.
She claims the data breach shows that the defendant’s cyber and data security systems are inadequate.
Sloan is seeking restitution and any other equitable monetary relief.
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Why so long to admit that it happened?
What info was taken?
Why not sue the perpetrators rather than the aggrieved?
Is money involved, perhaps?
Because they probably can’t sue the hackers, and the hospital has a duty to protect the information from hackers…the suit will determine if CHI took the industry standard protections and safeguards to keep this from happening…
if not, they will pay damages. As a patient of CHI, I hope my information was not taken. But I’m more than a bit annoyed the security seems to have broken down. Hackers are not a secret. There are lots of experts to help protect systems. The hackers always seem to be a step or two ahead, but they can be tracked. They can be stopped.
How was the plaintiff harmed, what was the personal damage? I agree it shouldn’t have happened, but this just sounds like a greedy person with a greedy lawyer.