A cyberintelligence company that happened upon patient data mistakenly made accessible on the Internet by a cancer detection facility can sue the facility for defamation after it alleged in a video and book that the intelligence company worked with the government to surveil private businesses, a federal judge has ruled in denying a motion to dismiss.
In Tiversa Holding v. LabMD, U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer of the Western District of Pennsylvania said statements made by co-defendant Michael J. Daugherty that Tiversa was using software to illegally search private files and use those files to extort companies into engaging Tiversa’s services and colluding in government shakedowns went beyond permissible opinion or hyperbole and entered the realm of possible defamatory statements.
