Schneider Law Firm represents clients who have suffered a personal injury, privacy breach, and / or economic loss as part of a class action and mass tort claims. Class actions and mass tort claims allows individuals to band together and jointly proceed to litigation against large corporations who have breached your rights. There is strength in numbers and at Schneider Law Firm we insure that everyone’s rights are heard when they have been wronged. We insure that you have the strongest legal team behind you when we proceed with your claim. Please contact Cary Schneider or Adam Warner to discuss if you have a viable class action or mass tort claim.
Below is one of the cases that we are representing victims of a cyber breach who saw their personal information including health and financial records compromised.
Privacy Breach Class Action
Schneider Law Firm along with Waddell Phillips Professional Corporation, and Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP have launched a proposed class action in relation to a privacy breach that was announced by CarePartners in June 2018.
The claim alleges that cyber attackers were able to exploit CarePartners’ inadequate and outdated security systems to access CarePartners’ computer network and extract data containing the personal information and personal health information of hundreds of thousands of CarePartners patients and staff (the “Breach”). The compromised information includes detailed medical records and financial information, as well as contact information, and information about patients’ daily lives, workplaces, families, and homes.
This proposed class action is brought on behalf of all persons, excluding CarePartners’ senior executives, officers and directors, and unionized staff, whose Personal Information and/or Personal Health Information was accessed in the Breach. The claim alleges that CarePartners is liable for breach of privacy, breach of contract, negligence, and various breaches of various statutes.
There is no cost to participate in this class proceeding. The lawyers are working on a contingency fee arrangement, and will only be paid from the proceeds of the litigation, if successful.
The Cyber Breach at CarePartners
CarePartners is one of Ontario’s largest private healthcare services providers. It specializes in providing out-of-hospital care—including personal support care, nursing care, rehabilitation care, caregiver support, and palliative care—to patients at their homes, schools or workplaces. CarePartners provides its services to patients primarily as a partner of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (“LHINs”), although it also runs its own network of clinics. In total, CarePartners had provided services to approximately 237,000 patients at the time of the Breach.
To carry out its work, CarePartners collects a large quantity of sensitive personal information, including personal health information, from its patients and their families, as well as sensitive personal information, including personal financial information, from its over 4,500 staff and contract workers.
On June 11, 2018, hackers informed CarePartners that they had penetrated CarePartners’ computer network, and used their unauthorized access to extract virtually all of the data on their servers dating back to 2010. They provided a sample of the stolen data to accompany their claim (which CarePartners verified as authentic), and demanded an undisclosed amount of money as ransom in exchange for not posting the stolen data online. CarePartners did not pay the ransom, and the hackers began approaching media outlets regarding the Breach, which included providing CBC News reporters with access to a large sample of the stolen data, which CBC News reported on here.
CarePartners did not provide individuals affected by the Breach with direct notice that the Breach had occurred until after the CBC News report. The notice that was provided did not explain how the Breach occurred, the scope of the data that was stolen, or what efforts CarePartners made to recover the data. To date, CarePartners has not provided affected individuals with any details regarding these important issues.
CarePartners Privacy Class Action
Contact Us
If you are a current or former patient, non-unionized employee, or contractor of CarePartners, you may be eligible for compensation if the action is successful. For more information, or to ensure that you are provided with important notices about the class action as it progresses, please contact Adam Warner at Schneider Law Firm. Your information will be kept strictly confidential and will be used only to communicate with you, and to assist with the prosecution of the action.