"We heard you had a baby..."

BY NITIN PARDAL, LAWYER, WISE LAW OFFICE

A warning to mothers who gave birth at Rouge Valley Centenary Hospital - Big Brother may be watching you.  

Or just trying to sell you a Registered Education Savings Plan ("RESP").

Between 2009 and 2013 confidential personal data of maternity patients at Rouge Valley Centenary Hospital was allegedly distributed to one or more RESP dealer representatives.

As reported by the Toronto Star:

Shaida Bandali, a former clerk at Rouge Valley Centenary Hospital, was charged by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) with the “quasi-criminal” offence of “misusing” as many as 8,300 records, mostly of mothers who gave birth between 2009 and 2013. It’s the first time anyone has been charged in relation to a slew of privacy breaches revealed over recent months at numerous hospitals in the GTA...

She is accused of creating investor lists from the stolen records of new mothers, providing them to RESP dealers and receiving payment for this without informing the hospital or the patients, according to the OSC.

In recognizing the tort of intrusion upon seclusion, the Ontario Court of Appeal specifically mentioned "intrusions into matters such as one's ... health records" in the seminal decision of Jones v. Tsige.

This begs the question, can the families affected by this breach sue the hospital and the alleged individual wrongdoer for damages under the tort of intrusion upon seclusion?

The answer, as my subsequent blog post will describe, may not be so straightforward.

- Nitin Pardal, Toronto

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