A Twin Cities case of medical information put on MySpace has been sent back to district court to reconsider plaintiff's claims.
The ruling stemmed from a suit by a Twin Cities woman whose diagnosis of having a sexually transmitted disease showed up in 2006 on a MySpace social networking page that referred to the woman as "Rotten Candy," displayed her picture, and said she cheated on her husband and was addicted to plastic surgery.
The woman alleged that after she was found to have the disease at Fairview Cedar Ridge Clinic in Apple Valley, a medical assistant there read her file and conveyed the information to mutual relatives, including one who may have created the MySpace page, which was taken down a couple of days after its discovery.
The clinic eventually fired the employee for violating policy by accessing the patient's records, and the patient sued Fairview Clinics, the former employee and two other women who allegedly helped spread the information.
A district court ruled in favor of the defendants on several grounds -- including that she hadn't produced enough evidence, that the clinic couldn't be held liable for the unauthorized act of its employee, and the posting on MySpace didn't constitute "publicity" under the law.
But a three-judge Court of Appeals panel ruled that the MySpace posting did constitute publicity. What matters, the court said, isn't how many people saw the posting, but rather whether it was posted in a medium that conveys information directly to the public.
Automated summary from: StarTribune
