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IRS faces class action lawsuit over theft of 60 million medical records
The Internal Revenue Services is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.
According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.
"This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents," the complaint reads. "No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records," it continued. According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company, however, "it did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter," the complaint read.
The class action lawsuit against the IRS seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages "per violation per individual" in addition to punitive damages for constitutional violations. Thus, compensatory damages could start at a minimum of $250 billion.
Dan Markingson – a vulnerable, psychotic young man – was forced to choose between enrolling in a Pharma-funded drug study or being involuntarily committed (in other words, locked up). A UMN [University of Minnesota] doctor enrolled him in the study despite having just determined that Dan 'lack[ed] the capacity to make decisions regarding [his] treatment,' rendering it highly unlikely that Dan could have given valid informed consent to participate. As Dan's mother, Mary Weiss, observed his mental condition deteriorating, she repeatedly tried to have Dan removed from the trial – at one point asking 'Do we have to wait until he kills himself or someone else before anyone does anything?' But the UMN co-investigators in the drug study refused to terminate his participation. Shortly after Ms. Weiss made her desperate plea, Dan Markingson killed himself by cutting his own throat.
After Carl Elliott, the University of Minnesota bioethicist, refused to drop the matter, Rotenberg asked the university’s Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee to take up the question of '[w]hat is the faculty[’s] collective role in addressing factually incorrect attacks on particular university faculty research activities?' – a question that appeared both to accuse Elliott of 'factually incorrect attacks' and to call for some unspecified action to 'address' them. Other faculty, including the president of the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of University Professors, viewed this as an attempt to intimidate Elliott into silence. If so, it backfired. The story ended up in the press, putting the Markingson case back in the public eye and once again making the University of Minnesota look really bad.
The professor, Carl Elliott, says he has obtained consent documents for two separate schizophrenic patients that appear to be exact copies — not just in the subjects’ apparent replies, but in the positions of the lettering on the pages.
Elliott said it is improbable that separate patients would provide identical responses to the questionnaire, which includes open-ended questions about the risks and requirements of clinical research. And that, he said, raises questions about whether the university was really examining patients to determine their ability to consent to research.
the university’s general counsel, Mark Rotenberg, challenged the authenticity of the documents and disagreed that study recruiters failed to obtain proper and independent consent from mentally ill patients.
'I am challenging these allegations directly,' he said. 'We have no reason to believe the consent forms were prepared inappropriately.'
Despite all this (and much more), the University has never acknowledged any errors or taken any disciplinary action related to the Markingson case and has repeatedly rejected calls for an independent investigation. That’s probably because from the start the University has handled this case as a litigation matter. Rather than trying to determine whether there were problems with the way its personnel treated Markingson, the University has focused on minimizing its potential liability. Accordingly, the University appears to run every inquiry related to the case through the office of its General Counsel, Mr. Rotenberg. When Carl Elliott (my mentor as a grad student at UMN) wrote a damning article about the case in Mother Jones, the University’s response came from Rotenberg. When UMN bioethicists called on the University’s Board of Regents to launch an independent investigation, the Regents deferred to Rotenberg. Not surprisingly, he declined.Note that this still begs the question of who the client is. Is it the university, or the university's leaders?
When you turn to your lawyer, you’re going to get a particular kind of response. The GC isn’t in a position to take an objective look at the circumstances. He’s an advocate. His role is not to make sure the client has conducted itself ethically, but to minimize the client’s risk. Asking your lawyer to respond to allegations of wrongdoing is like asking your PR flacks to do so. Their job is to make their clients look good, not to make sure they’ve acted properly.
In addition to Mr. Rotenberg’s role as the University’s top defender and advocate, there is another reason he cannot impartially consider requests for an investigation: the General Counsel’s Office is an important player in some of the disturbing events at issue. As noted above, Rotenberg himself has been accused of attempting to intimidate and silence the bioethicist who has most doggedly sought an investigation. The University’s lawyers are also responsible for the disgraceful silencing of Markingson’s mother, Mary Weiss. After avoiding liability by arguing the University was immune from suit, these lawyers then threatened to force Weiss – whose son had died in a University doctor’s 'care – to pay the University’s legal costs of some $57,000. The University used that threat as leverage to get Weiss to forgo an appeal of the trial court’s decision.
it appears that UMN believes, as do many other institutions, that protecting itself from scandal and its consequences comes first and foremost and that, like the big banks, that it is too big to be punished.
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