A U.S. appeals court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit in Puerto Rico against Allscripts, but noted that the EHR vendor is open to being sued in the U.S. territory, Law360 reported Aug. 8.
Juan Rodriguez-Rivera, MD, had sued Allscripts for allegedly destroying his medical records as he was attempting to switch to a new vendor. While the First District U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision to toss out the complaint, it disagreed with Allscripts' contention that the court didn't have jurisdiction over the company.
"After several years of knowingly targeting new Puerto Rico customers, serving current Puerto Rico customers, and benefitting from not insubstantial revenue out of Puerto Rico, Allscripts cannot claim that its contact with Puerto Rico was involuntary or that it couldn't foresee being haled [sic] into a Puerto Rico courtroom when things went south with those customers," Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote.
An Allscripts spokesperson told Becker's the company doesn't comment on pending litigation.