3 More Plaintiffs vs. Johns Hopkins Oppose Transfer to MOVEit MDL in Minn.
Three plaintiffs in two more privacy complaints against Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System oppose plaintiff Bruce Bailey’s motion for centralization and transfer of related actions to MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation (see 2307120053), said their…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Monday response (docket 3083) before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Plaintiffs Pamela Hunter (1:23-cv-01826), and Maria Gregory and Ayomiposi Asaolu (docket 1:23-cv-01854) filed cases that name only the Hopkins entities, while Bailey seeks to move the cases “away from the region where the parties and most of the witnesses are located” to the district of Minnesota and to consolidate them with the 33 “and counting” other cases against numerous defendants not named in the Hopkins plaintiffs’ complaints, said the motion. On July 5, Bailey filed an action against Progress Software Corp. (PSC) and Pension Benefit Information, then filed a motion the following day to consolidate and transfer nine other actions that named the same defendants into a single proceeding before the U.S. District Court for Minnesota (see 2307120053). The Hopkins plaintiffs initiated their actions in July for a data breach that involved sensitive health information for patients of Johns Hopkins hospitals and medical providers. A third case that named only Johns Hopkins entities as defendants, Schaffer v. the Johns Hopkins University (docket 1:23-cv-02099), was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for Maryland in Baltimore, said the motion. Three additional cases filed in the district of Maryland name PSC and the Hopkins plaintiffs but name only the Hopkins defendants “because they have no privity” with PSC “and did not believe them to be the responsible entities for the Data Breach that occurred on Johns Hopkins server(s),” the motion said. Shortly after the filing of the three cases that name both the Hopkins defendants and PSC -- Truesdale v. PSC (docket 1:23-cv-01913), Pulignani v. PSC (docket 1:23-cv-01912) and Doe v. PSC (1:23-cv-01923) -- Doe filed a notice of related action as to the Hunter and Gregory cases, seeking to bring those cases into that action, the response said. At the time of submission, Bailey or others have designated at least 33 complaints as “’related to this action, and there may be more yet lingering in federal and state courts,” it said. The actions for which Bailey seeks consolidation involve breaches of data for seven named defendants other than PSC, “ranging from banks to life insurance companies to state agencies,” it said; several, such as the Hopkins plaintiffs, don’t name PSC.