Angela Heard v. Torrance Memorial Medical Center
Opinion
Trial Court Opinion
I. BACKGROUND
On November 15, 2022, Plaintiff Angela Heard filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of herself and all California residents who had their personally identifiable information and protected health information improperly disclosed to Facebook as a result of accessing Torrance’s website. See Dkt. 1-1, Ex. A (Compl.). Heard alleges that Torrance embeds Facebook’s Tracking Pixel into pages of its website, www.torrancememorial.org, allowing it to monitor how patients and visitors interact with the website. Id. ¶ 20. Heard alleges that Pixel “tracks users as they navigate through the Website and logs which pages are visited, which buttons are clicked, Case 2:22-cv-09466-DSF-JPR Document Filed 03/13/ Page 2 of Page ID #:468
specific information users enter into forms . . . , search queries (e.g., “do I have covid”), and other information including a patient’s IP address.” Id. ¶ 21. This information is collected not just by Torrance but also by Facebook, so if a patient is a Facebook user, Facebook links the information it receives from the website, which includes identifying information, to the patient’s Facebook…