Labcorp Will Face Claims It Sent Patient Data to Google, Meta

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings failed to escape claims it deployed tracking software on its website to collect and share patients’ personal health information with Meta Platforms Inc., Google, and other third parties without consent.

US District Judge William L. Osteen Jr. denied Labcorp’s motion to dismiss a proposed class action in a Sept. 27 order in the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.

Labcorp embedded tracker code on its website to collect patients’ sensitive and health-related information and share it with third parties including Meta and Google, according to plaintiffs’ Sept. 2023 amended complaint.

Agreeing with an August order and recommendation from Magistrate Judge Joi Elizabeth Peake, Osteen found that the plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded that the sensitive medical issues at the heart of the complaint were plaintiffs’ own personal information and not that of another person and that the claims will move forward.

In its October 2023 motion to dismiss, Labcorp said the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate actual harm or to prove that they had an expectation of privacy on its website’s homepage.

The amended complaint didn’t “identify what searches Plaintiffs ran, whether the searches related to issues they were experiencing, that they were Labcorp patients, or that they undertook any other actions on the Website,” the company said in its memorandum in support of its motion to dismiss.

Whether or not it was private information—and whether or not it was plaintiffs’ personal information—will ultimately be addressed following discovery, the judge said in his order. “Although the motion to dismiss is denied, Plaintiffs are forewarned that these vague pleadings cause this court substantial concern with Plaintiffs’ class allegations,” Osteen added.

Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Elliot Morgan Parsonage PLLC, Meyer Wilson Co., and Levin Law PA represent plaintiffs. Hogan Lovells and Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP represent Lapcorp.

The case is HOWARD et al v. LABORATORY CORPORATION OF AMERICA et al, M.D.N.C., No. 1:23-cv-00758, motion to dismiss denied 9/27/24.