A jury Thursday rejected a claim by a UCLA medical assistant that her employer was liable after a romantic rival accessed her private health records.
The Los Angeles Superior Court panel deliberated for less than a day before finding in favor of the University of California Board of Regents and UCLA in a lawsuit brought by Norma Lozano, whose lawyers recommended an award of $1.25 million to compensate her for her emotional distress.
Defense attorney Bryan Heckenlively said during his final argument Wednesday that no hospital has a fail-safe system and that the blame for what happened to the 41-year-old plaintiff rested with Dr. John Edwards and his former temporary office employee, Alexies Price.
Edwards, an OB-GYN affiliated with the UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine, had access to the data system of more than 4.5 million patients, Heckenlively said.
Edwards gave his password to Price, who was competing for the affections of Dedreck Harris, the same man who got Lozano pregnant, Heckenlively said. Lozano was not a patient of Edwards.
Heckenlively also said the measures taken by UCLA to protect patient confidentiality are comparable to those at other medical facilities.
According to Lozano’s invasion of privacy suit, filed in April 2013, Price accessed Lozano’s medical records in September 2012, made copies with her cell phone and sent them to Harris and another of his former girlfriends, who was the mother of two of his children.
Edwards, who testified that he did give his staff the password to the UCLA patient data base, settled with Lozano before trial.
Lozano did not sue Price, who is now married to Harris.
— City News Service