Four people this month have sued a Cleveland, Tennessee, debt collections agency in federal court following a July 2024 data breach.
Felicia Cooper, Charles Mitchell and Gary Self, all of Georgia, and Lisa Nail of New York have each filed lawsuits against Nationwide Recovery Services. They allege that the company, which acquired their personal data through its contracts with entities including governments, hospitals and other health care providers, violated federal guidelines and broke federal privacy laws.
The four plaintiffs argued, in separate complaints in federal court, that Nationwide was negligent in its cybersecurity practices. The data breach that exposed their information is itself evidence of bad practice, they said.
They said in their filings that Nationwide also delayed in notifying them of the breach, which could have increased the exposure of their private financial and medical information. Mitchell, Self and Cooper are also suing Vitruvian Health, a Georgia-based health care company that operates Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton as well as clinics in Cleveland and Collegedale. Rhea Medical Center in Dayton is listed as a defendant alongside Nationwide in Nail’s suit.
The four plaintiffs asked the court to recognize their suits as class actions, hold a jury trial and award them an unspecified amount of damages. Some of them also asked that Nationwide and other defendants surrender proceeds tied to the breached data and that the court compel the defendants to implement stronger cybersecurity controls and prevent “deceptive practices.”