Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani Philadelphia Partner Sara Anderson Frey and San Diego Partner Timothy Branson, with assistance from Walnut Creek Partner Solomon Pantuch, recently obtained dismissal of a putative class action privacy lawsuit on behalf of a fertility clinic.
The plaintiff filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the clinic’s use of a tracking pixel on its website violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA), and California Constitution.
Frey and Branson filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the plaintiff failed to state a claim because she consented to the disclosure of her information. Specifically, the GRSM team pointed out that the website’s cookie banner notice directed the plaintiff to the website’s privacy and cookie policies, which advised the plaintiff that the website collected and disclosed certain information.
The district court granted the motion to dismiss. The court first found that the cookie banner provided reasonably conspicuous notice that use of the website constituted an agreement to the website’s hyperlinked cookie and privacy policies. The court next found that the website’s privacy policies were “so specific” that there could be no reasonable expectation that data would not be shared. Because consent was an element in each of the plaintiff’s claims, the court dismissed the complaint in its entirety.
This result is an important win for the firm’s client in light of recent adverse jury verdicts and multi-million dollar settlements involving other companies in similar cases alleging the sharing of health data.