Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough LLP is pleased to announce a victory before the Illinois Supreme Court on behalf of Christie Clinic, a central Illinois healthcare system, following a 2021 data security incident.
Petta v. Christie Business Holding Co. is the Illinois Supreme Court’s first decision in a data breach case. In the opinion filed on Jan. 24, the Court affirmed dismissal of the case with prejudice, agreeing with Christie Clinic that Petta lacked standing because she did not allege injury in fact. Notably, the Court found that Petta failed to allege that any of her private information was accessed or subsequently used by cybercriminals, and that her allegations of increased risk of identity theft following the incident were insufficient. The Court also reasoned that Petta’s allegations regarding a loan application made in someone else’s name did not suggest identity theft, as they involved only publicly-available information. Finally, the Court noted that because the loan application involved only Petta’s publicly-available data, it was not traceable to the data security incident.
Nelson Mullins Chicago partner Jeff Schieber represented Christie Clinic, along with Taft attorneys Jonathan Amarilio and Jaimin Shah.
“The decision puts Illinois toward a more stringent end of the spectrum on standing requirements in data breach cases,” Schieber said. “We are thrilled the Court fully adopted the core argument we’ve made all along—because the loan application used information available to the public, and was made in someone else’s name, there was no identity theft, and thus no standing.”
Original source can be found here.