SANTORO v. TOWER HEALTH

District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania·Decided November 13, 2024·No. 5:22-cv-04580·Unknown

Opinion

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

PATRICK SANTORO, JESSICA : CIVIL ACTION LANDIS : : v. : NO. 22-4580 : TOWER HEALTH :

MEMORANDUM

MURPHY, J. November 13, 2024 This case is one of many questioning a hospital’s use of the Meta Pixel tracking tool on its public website. But the issue before us now is how many chances a plaintiff gets to adequately plead its case. Here, plaintiffs filed three complaints. Tower Health responded to each in turn with a motion to dismiss. Over a month after oral argument, we dismissed plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice based on the insufficiency of their factual allegations. We concluded that after three attempts, the facts simply weren’t there and weren’t coming. Plaintiffs now ask us to reconsider our decision to dismiss the claims without leave to amend. As we stated in our memorandum dismissing the claims, we recognize that this case invokes legitimate fears about the improper sharing of medical information — plaintiffs’ concerns, in general, are not frivolous. But plaintiffs have not demonstrated that we ought to entertain allegations that could have been, but were not, alleged earlier. They wanted a resolution on the (third round of) pleadings, and that is what they got. We reach the same result whether examining our earlier ruling for legal error or under the more liberal standard of Rule 15. Plaintiffs’ motion to reconsider is denied. I. BACKGROUND Plaintiffs Patrick Santoro and Jessica Landis claim that defendant Tower Health used Meta Pixel software to illegally intercept and communicate their private health information for monetary gain. They assert claims against Tower Health for violation of the Electronic

Communications Privacy Act (Wiretap Act), negligence, and intrusion upon seclusion. Because this is a motion for reconsideration, we assume the parties’ familiarity with the factual allegations as outlined in plaintiffs’ second amended complaint (SAC) and our memorandum dismissing the case. DI 40, 70.1 Plaintiffs filed their initial class action complaint in this case on November 16, 2022. DI 1. Tower Health responded with its first motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. DI 25. Among other points, Tower Health argued that plaintiffs “fail[ed] to allege that Tower acted with a criminal or tortious purpose” necessary for a Wiretap Act violation. DI 25-1 at 15-16. Tower Health also argued that plaintiffs failed to allege facts demonstrating a duty of care, id. at 18, and failed to provide a sufficient factual basis to conclude any alleged intrusion was highly offensive,

id. at 21. On March 3, 2023, plaintiffs filed their first amended complaint. DI 28. Tower Health filed their second motion to dismiss. DI 35. Tower Health argued that “Plaintiffs do not (and cannot) allege facts showing that the substance, purport, or meaning of their communications have been transmitted to a third party . . . . Instead, Plaintiffs make bald assertions that personally identifiable health information is transmitted to Meta.” DI 35-2 at 18 (internal quotations omitted). Regarding the negligence claim, they argued that the amended complaint “does not allege any facts identifying specific communications from Plaintiffs that were

1 We adopt the pagination supplied by the CM/ECF docketing system. purportedly sent to Meta,” and “[m]ere conclusory allegations are not enough to establish that Tower violated any alleged duty of care.” Id. at 21. Tower Health further argued that plaintiffs “allege no facts that any of Tower’s alleged conduct caused them ‘mental suffering, shame or humiliation’ or was otherwise ‘highly offensive.’” Id. at 25.

Plaintiffs sought leave to amend their complaint “to revise certain factual allegations, and add new factual allegations,” which we granted. DI 38-1 at 4; see DI 39. Plaintiffs filed their SAC on May 30, 2023. DI 40. In its third motion to dismiss, Tower Health argued that “the overarching problem is that the SAC—like its predecessors—rests entirely on bare, conclusory allegations.” DI 43-2 at 10; see id. at 19 (“Plaintiffs make bald assertions that the URLs, buttons, links, pages, and tabs they viewed are ‘individually-identifiable health information’ that was transmitted to Meta.”). Plaintiffs responded that the SAC contains “detailed, extensive factual allegations.” DI 46 at 2. We held a 75-minute oral argument on Tower Health’s motion to dismiss on March 13, 2024. In its opening remarks to the court, Tower Health reiterated: “We still don’t know basic

information about what these plaintiffs say they did. We don’t know what website they visited . . . . We don’t know what pages plaintiffs have visited . . . . We don’t know if they searched anything.” DI 74 at 7; see id. at 8 (“And at this point, if they had the facts, we would know the facts.”). Tower Health argued that plaintiffs’ failure to provide details about the contents of the shared information undermined the negligence claim because “Tower could have only breached the duty if they were sharing that personal identifiable health information.” Id. at 19. When discussing the intrusion claim, Tower Health stated that “highly offensiveness is a stringent standard,” and “[plaintiffs] certainly haven’t told us what they searched, if anything.” Id. at 27. At the outset of plaintiffs’ argument, we cautioned that “[y]our biggest problem is the specificity of the pleadings.” Id. at 31. Plaintiffs responded that they had not pled more specific facts not because they “don’t know that information, which, of course, isn’t true” but because, in their view, “it’s not required.” Id. at 36. They explained: “We don’t believe that people who have had their personal health information improperly shared . . . should be forced to identify the

very things that are the subject of the violation in public documents.” Id. at 39. Plaintiffs offered to identify the specific medical conditions for which plaintiffs sought information if the court was “inclined to insist” that they do so. Id. at 51. We responded that the meaningful problem was not the specific condition, but the “extent and scope of the information.” Id. at 52. Plaintiffs did not offer any additional facts in response. Following oral argument, plaintiffs did not request leave to amend their complaint. Over a month later, on April 24, 2024, we issued an order dismissing plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice. DI 71. In the decision, we explained that plaintiffs’ failure to describe specific HIPAA-protected information that was transmitted to Meta undermined their claims that Tower Health intercepted communications for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act in violation of the

Wiretap Act; that Tower Health had a duty to protect sensitive health information and breached that duty; and that Tower Health committed an intrusion that was highly offensive. DI 70. We concluded that amendment would be futile. Id. at 14. Fourteen days later, Plaintiffs filed a motion for reconsideration with a proposed third amended complaint (TAC). DI 73. They claim that the dismissal order included two legal errors by (1) “finding that ‘providing further leave to amend would be futile’” and (2) “representing that dismissing [p]laintiffs’ claims with prejudice is somehow ‘consistent’ with Murphy v. Thomas Jefferson University Hosp., Inc.” DI 73 at 8. Plaintiffs’ proposed TAC includes facts that were not alleged in their three prior complaints, including the URLs that plaintiffs allegedly visited on Tower Health’s website, more details about the type and transmission of personal identifiers that Tower Health allegedly disclosed to Meta, and the health conditions for which plaintiffs sought information on Tower Health’s website. See DI 73 at 10-11; DI 73-2 at ¶¶ 9-10, 84-85, 87, 89, 126, 149-150, 155, 158, 160, 165, 168, 175, 265, 289, 292, 294, 303, 304, 307.

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