Fernandez v. Leidos, Inc.

127 F. Supp. 3d 1078, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 114858, 2015 WL 5095893
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. California
DecidedAugust 27, 2015
DocketNo. 2:14-cv-02247-GEB-KJN
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 127 F. Supp. 3d 1078 (Fernandez v. Leidos, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fernandez v. Leidos, Inc., 127 F. Supp. 3d 1078, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 114858, 2015 WL 5095893 (E.D. Cal. 2015).

Opinion

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT’S DISMISSAL MOTION UNDER RULES 12(b)(1) AND 12(b)(6)

GARLAND E. BURRELL, JR., Senior District Judge.

Defendant moves under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Rules”) 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) for dismissal of Plaintiffs putative class action, arguing under Rule 12(b)(1): “Plaintiff lacks Article III standing [to pursue his claims] because he has not alleged a cognizable injury[ ] in[ ] fact traceable to any action by [Defendant], and the Court therefore lacks subject matter jurisdiction.” (Def.’s Mem. P. & A. Supp. Mot. Dismiss (“Mot.”) 2:9-10, ECF No. 21.) Plaintiff alleges subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(a) and 1332(d).

[1082]*1082Plaintiffs allegations include the following:

[This is a] California consumer class action to secure redress .... [for the] betray[al of] Plaintiffs and [putative] Class Members’ trust.... In September 2011, [Defendant] ... fail[ed] to properly safeguard and protect [Plaintiffs and putative Class Members’ personally identifiable information (“PH”) and private health information (“PHI”)], and publicly disclos[ed] their PII/PHI without authorization (the “Data Breach”), in violation of ... the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (“CMIA”) (CAL. CIV. CODE § 56, et seq.), California Unfair Competition Law (CAL. BUS. & PROF. CODE § 17200, et seq.), and California common law. Plaintiff and [putative] Class Members are current and former United States military servicemen, servicewomen, and the family members of these servicemen and women....
The United States Department of Defense ... contracted with [Defendant] to provide ... electronic information management and data security services for safeguarding and protecting Plaintiffs and [putative] Class Members’ PII/PHI, all of which was entrusted to [Defendant] in connection with obtaining health care coverage....
[O]n September 12, 2011, Plaintiffs and [putative] Class Members’ PII/PHI .... was contained on backup data tapes transported in an unsecure manner by [Defendant’s] newly hired, low-level employee in his personal vehicle. The data tapes were taken from the [employee’s] vehicle while it was parked in downtown San Antonio, Texas, and left unattended for over eight hours.
A thief or thieves broke into the [Defendant’s] employee’s ... vehicle, which had no special protections for the information, and took the ... backup data tapes, thereby gaining information worth millions of dollars, which the thief or thieves subsequently sold, transferred, opened, read, mined, and otherwise used without Plaintiffs and [putative] Class Members’ authorization.

(Compl. ¶¶ 1-4, 56.)

The wrongfully disclosed PII/PHI included, inter alia, Plaintiffs and [putative] Class Members’ Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, and personal health data — including private medical records, health provider information, laboratory test results, medical diagnoses, and prescription medication information.... Plaintiffs and [putative] Class Members’ PII/PHI was ... either unencrypted or improperly partially encrypted.

(Id. ¶ 5.)

Defendant argues:

This case follows closely on the heels of the rejection by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia of the same and similar class action claims brought by 31 other plaintiffs represented by Plaintiffs counsel [in] In re Sci. Applications Int’l Corp. (SAIC) Backup Tape Data Theft Litig. [45 F.Supp.3d 14] (D.D.C. May 9, 2014). [The SAIC court] held that those plaintiffs lacked Article III standing because, consistent with the holdings of the vast majority of courts addressing similar fact patterns, ‘the mere loss of data — without evidence that it has been either viewed or misused— does not constitute an injury sufficient to confer standing.’ [SAIC, 45 F.Supp.3d] at [19].

(Mot. 1:12-19.)

Article III of the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to actual “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. “ ‘One element of the ease-or-controversy requirement’ is that plaintiff[ ] [1083]*1083‘must establish that [he has] standing to sue.’ ” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, — U.S. —, 133 S.Ct. 1138, 1146, 185 L.Ed.2d 264 (2013) (quoting Raines v., Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818, 117 S.Ct. 2312, 138 L.Ed.2d 849 (1997)). To satisfy Article III standing,

the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in fact — an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of — the injury has to be fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some third party not before the court.

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks, brackets and ellipses omitted). “Moreover, if ... the named plaintiff! ] purporting to represent a class [has not] established the requisite of a case or controversy with the defendant!], [he] may [not] seek relief on behalf of himself or any other member of the class.” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 494, 94 S.Ct. 669, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974).

“Under Rule 12(b)(1), a defendant may challenge the plaintiffs jurisdictional allegations in one of two ways. A ‘facial’ attack accepts the truth of the plaintiffs allegations but asserts that they are insufficient on their face to invoke federal jurisdiction. The district court resolves a facial attack as it would a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6): Accepting the plaintiffs allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs favor, the court determines whether the allegations are sufficient as a legal matter to invoke the court’s jurisdiction.
A ‘factual’ attack, by contrast, contests the truth of the plaintiffs factual allegations, usually by introducing evidence outside the pleadings. When the defendant raises a factual attack, the plaintiff must support h[is] jurisdictional allegations with ‘competent proof,’ under the same evidentiary standard that governs in the summary judgment context. The plaintiff bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that each of the requirements for subject-matter jurisdiction has been met. With one caveat, if the existence of jurisdiction turns on disputed factual issues, the district court may resolve those factual disputes itself.

Leite v. Crane Co., 749 F.3d 1117

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Bluebook (online)
127 F. Supp. 3d 1078, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 114858, 2015 WL 5095893, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fernandez-v-leidos-inc-caed-2015.