A federal judge has deleted, for now, a class action lawsuit accusing the University of Chicago Medical Center of teaming with Google to improperly harvest patient data to help Google build a new electronic health record management system.
On Sept. 4, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said plaintiffs in the case couldn’t show how anyone was actually harmed by the alleged sharing of patient information or the alleged breach of the confidentiality contract between patients and the hospital.
“Plaintiff has not adequately pleaded that the University’s breach of contract caused him economic damages,” the judge wrote.
The parties have been in court on the privacy violations claims since June 2019, when attorneys from the prominent Chicago class action law firm, Edelson P.C., filed suit in Chicago federal court against Google and the University of Chicago. They represented named plaintiff Matt Dinerstein in the action.
Accusing the defendants of “what is likely the greatest heist of consumer medical records in history,” the Edelson lawyers asked the court to expand the action to include potentially “hundreds of thousands of individuals.”
They said the University of Chicago cooperated with Google beginning in 2017 to give electronic health records from nearly every UC Medical Center patient from 2009-2016.
Google would then allegedly used that information to help build its own patented proprietary and commercial electronic health record system. In exchange, the University of Chicago would be granted a license to access that EHR system, containing hundreds of thousands of patient records, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint alleged the university’s participation in the alleged gambit violated federal patient privacy law and broke its contract with patients, which pledges it would safeguard patient information in compliance with federal and state law, only sharing the information for research purposes.
The lawsuit accused Google of illegally interfering with the contractual relationship between Dinerstein and other patients and the UC Medical Center, by persuading the hospital to violate the contract and the law by sharing the patient records.
The University of Chicago responded to the lawsuit by asking Judge Pallmeyer to dismiss the action, asserting the plaintiffs can’t prove they were actually harmed by any of the alleged actions by either Google or the university.
In her decision dealing with the request to toss the case, Pallmeyer conceded Dinerstein had established an ability to sue the university for allegedly violating his privacy. The judge also brushed aside the defendants’ assertion that Dinerstein should be blocked from pressing his breach of contract claims. The defendants had argued Dinerstein and his Edelson lawyers were attempting to use those contract claims to sidestep federal privacy laws, which would not allow them to sue merely for violating the laws.
“Mr. Dinerstein has plausibly alleged that the University breached its contractual promise to comply with federal law when it exchanged protected health information for the license to use” Google’s new EHR system,” the judge wrote.
However, Pallmeyer said the plaintiffs still had more work to do to show how, exactly, Dinerstein and other UC Medical Center patients were harmed in a way that would allow them to sue for a recovery payday.
The judge rejected the argument that Dinerstein and other patients have a “property interest” in their medical information, or that “the value of that property has been diminished by the University’s or Google’s actions.”
Pallmeyer further said the plaintiffs had not yet demonstrated any “wrongful or malicious intent” on Google’s part in seeking the University of Chicago’s cooperation.
The judge dismissed all seven of the counts brought by Dinerstein and the Edelson attorneys against both the university and Google.
However, the judge said she would allow the plaintiffs to try again in an amended complaint. That new document would need to be filed by Oct. 15, she said.
The University of Chicago has been represented by attorney Brian D. Sieve, and others with the firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, of Chicago.
Google has been represented by attorneys with the firms of Cooley LLP, of San Francisco, and Neal & McDevitt, of Northfield.