Days after it was revealed a data breach may have affected up to 11.9 million Quest diagnostics customers, a Florida woman filed a class action lawsuit against the diagnostics giant.
On Wednesday, Traci Diana Julin, of Lake Mary, filed the federal lawsuit against Quest Diagnostics, AMCA and Optum360 for a security breach at AMCA that potentially compromised customers’ personal and medical information.
The lawsuit seeks an as-of-yet undetermined amount of money and to force all three companies to implement safeguards to prevent another breach and to protect customer information, said Patrick Barthle, one of Julin’s attorneys.
“Our suit is against Quest against Optum360 and AMCA related to the loss of this information,” said Barthle. “In any data breach case, the crux of the complaint is that you face identity theft that may have already happened or is occurring. But also you face the threat of it happening in the future.”
Representatives for Quest Diagnostics, AMCA and Optum360 did not immediately provide comment.
On Sunday, Quest Diagnostics said that AMCA informed the company that there had been unauthorized access on AMCA’s web payment page and that information from Quest Diagnostics and Optum360 customers may have been compromised.
The information stored on AMCA’s affected system includes credit card numbers, bank account information, medical information and personal information, including Social Security numbers.
Because of the nature of the information that may have been compromised, the lawsuit claims that Julin and patients like her are now subject to identity theft and long-term financial and credit repercussions.
“The ramifications of defendants’ failure to keep patients’ personable identifiable information secure are long lasting and severe,” the suit said. “Once personable identifiable information is stolen, fraudulent use of that information and damage to victims may continue for years.”
Julin has a chronic condition that requires routine testing services and has used Quest Diagnostics’ lab services at least 17 times between July 2015 and May 10, the lawsuit said.
Julin’s lawsuit is expected to be one of the first of many, as the list of those potentially affected by the breach continues to grow, said Barthle. On Tuesday, LabCorp, which has one of the largest clinical laboratory networks in the world, said that approximately 7.7 million consumers were affected by a breach at AMCA.
“I would guess we will see a bunch of these cases filed, probably all over the country,” said Barthle.
The amount of lawsuits will likely call for the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to decided if the cases should be consolidated and where the cases would be centralized, he said.
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