A BakerHostetler team recently earned high praise for prevailing in their representation of healthcare system Northwestern Memorial Care in a case that challenged Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) – a law that issues steep statutory damages of $1,000 per negligent violation. Chicago-based Partners Bonnie Keane DelGobbo and Joel Griswold, and Associate Amy Lenz, scored a runner-up nod in Law.com’s Litigator of the Week competition Dec. 8, 2023, for successfully arguing on appeal at the Illinois Supreme Court that healthcare workers’ use of automated dispensing cabinets that scan fingerprints for access to medicine and supplies fell under an exclusion to BIPA for “information collected, used, or stored for health care treatment, payment, or operations under” the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the federal law dealing with private health information.
The court’s unanimous decision overruled the Cook County Circuit Court and a lower appellate court that had allowed BIPA class actions to move forward against the company, as well as a medical equipment maker.