The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday ruled that patients whose personal information were published on the dark web by hackers who were refused ransom money from the Athens Orthopedic Clinic could pursue punitive damages against the clinic in a precedent-setting case, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The incident happened in 2016 when a cyber thief who referred to himself as the “Dark Overlord” hacked into the databases of the clinic and stole the personal information of an estimated 200,000 patients.
The clinic advised current and former patients to set up anti-fraud protections.
Justice Nels Peterson in a Dec. 23 opinion said the case fell into a different category of data-exposure cases.
“Here, the plaintiffs allege that criminals are now able to assume their identities fraudulently and that the risk of such identity theft is ‘imminent and substantial,’” he said per Law.com. “This amounts to a factual allegation about the likelihood that any given class member will have her identity stolen as a result of the data breach.”
One woman, Christine Collins, said fraudulent charges were made to her credit card following the breach.
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