A federal judge has recommended dismissing a class-action data breach lawsuit against Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health over a 2022 cyberattack.
Plaintiff Bonnie Maser filed the complaint in April 2023 in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleging CommonSpirit Health failed to protect and safeguard the medical and personal information of her and more than 623,000 other people when the more-than-140-hospital system was hacked in October of that year.
Ms. Maser had asserted that cybercriminals racked up over $3,000 in fraudulent charges to her credit union account because of the breach, causing her to lose her housing and her credit score to drop. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Prose wrote in an April 16 order that the plaintiff did not prove that the bank fraud was related to the CommonSpirit cyberattack.
The judge also disagreed with Ms. Maser's claims that the breach has opened her up to future fraud, writing that the "causal chain is too attenuated to consider the risk substantial at this point" and that no financially sensitive data was stolen in the hack.