Catharine Tunney reports:
The Supreme Court of Canada will rule Friday on whether British Columbia has to hand millions of patients’ health information over to tobacco giant Philip Morris International.
It’s the newest chapter in the province’s legal fight to force cigarette makers like Philip Morris to compensate the province for the cost of treating tobacco-related illnesses — a battle that started way back in the late 1990s, when it first filed a lawsuit against 13 tobacco companies. Collectively, the provinces suing the tobacco firms are seeking about $120 billion.
Read more on CBC.ca.
h/t, @fanCRTCProfling
Update: Here’s the ruling.
In response, Canadian Law Professor Teresa Scassa tweeted:
In this post I consider what today’s SCC decision to deny PMI access to aggregate health data in big tobacco litigation can tell us about privacy, big data, and personal health info. The short answer is ‘not much’: https://t.co/Ftt6gmdjiy @uOttawaTechLaw @CIGIonline @cippic
— Teresa Scassa (@TeresaScassa) July 13, 2018
In this post I consider what today’s SCC decision to deny PMI access to aggregate health data in big tobacco litigation can tell us about privacy, big data, and personal health info. The short answer is ‘not much’: Supreme Court’s decision on (non) disclosure of aggregate health data in big tobacco litigation has few takeaways for privacy, big data.