Massachusetts Plaintiffs Pivot to Save Health Site Privacy Suits

Massachusetts plaintiffs in more than a dozen lawsuits over hospital and health-care system website technology are pivoting to federal and state privacy laws to keep their cases alive after a state Supreme Judicial Court ruling cast doubt on their wiretap claims.

The state high court in a monumental October ruling declined to apply Massachusetts’ decades-old Wiretap Act to cover code that tracks a user’s interaction with a website, setting the state apart from other venues that have been more receptive to similar arguments.

Since Vita vs. New England Baptist Hospital, plaintiffs in other cases responded by amending existing complaints ...