The California Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday that the University of California Board of Regents is not liable for damages after losing an external hard drive with medical patients’ information, since there is no evidence that the missing data was accessed or misused.
In November 2011, the UCLA Health System notified some of its patients that an encrypted hard drive with their personally identifiable medical information was lost in a burglary of a physician’s home. A piece of paper with the password for the hard drive was also missing.
Nearly a year later, Melinda Platter, one of the notified patients, filed a class-action lawsuit for “unlawful disclosure of confidential medical information” of the more than 16,000 patients who also had their personal data stolen.
On Tuesday, however, the state appellate court found that the Board of Regents could be held liable for damages “only when such negligence results in unauthorized or wrongful access to the information.”
Because Platter could not prove that the data had been accessed by an unauthorized person, the Court of Appeal directed the Los Angeles Superior Court to dismiss the action.
Compiled by Kristen Taketa, Bruin senior staff.