Federal Judge Grants Class-Action Status to WebMD’s VPPA Violation Case
A federal judge for the U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia on Thursday granted class-action status to a plaintiff who alleged that health and medical corporation WebMD violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by disclosing video-viewing information to Meta Platforms. WebMD had argued that class certification should not be granted because the proposed class is not adequately defined or ascertainable and that individual privacy settings impede the commonality requirement.
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“Plainly, the idea that class certification should be denied merely due to a possibility at this stage that a website gave a 404 error or a family member used someone else’s computer seems absurd,” the court said. “Moreover, it does not seem unreasonable that a claims process could be fashioned to help further verify whether a claimant meets the Class criteria, in addition to using the Event Data gathered by WebMD and Facebook. Should the proposed Class prove to be unascertainable in the future, however, WebMD may move to de-certify the Class.”
In addition to granting class certification based on the ascertainability requirement, the court found the plaintiff carried the burden of showing numerosity and commonality between all class members, among meeting other requirements.
Case 22-00644 began when plaintiff Linda Jancik filed a complaint in February 2022 alleging that WebMD violated VPPA when it improperly disclosed personally identifiable information (PII) to Meta's Facebook by installing the Facebook Pixel tracking tool and using it to disclose her and other class members’ video viewing history to the social media platform.