Court Dismisses Class Action Brought Against Health System for Sharing Information from Website and Patient Portal with Facebook and Google
The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a healthcare system’s motion to dismiss a class action brought pursuant to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”). The suit alleged that the health system’s website and patient portal, which were embedded with digital marketing trackers, collected data and shared that information with Facebook and Google for marketing purposes. The court dismissed the case because there was no evidence that the health system intended to commit a crime or tort at the time the data was intercepted. Thus, the court concluded, the crime-tort exception to the ECPA did not apply. Goulart v. Cape Cod Healthcare, Inc.