| 777 | Date: Sunday, 24 Oct 2010, 01.41 | Message # 1 |
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User ID: 777
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| A lawyer who sparked an international tuberculosis scare in 2007 after he flew to and from Europe while infected with a rare form of the disease can sue the U.S. government, an appeals court ruled on Friday.
In a significant legal win for plaintiff Andrew Speaker, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a lower court and said he could sue the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for allegedly disclosing his identity and confidential information relating to his treatment.
It made its ruling on grounds there was a "reasonable inference and thus a plausible claim that the CDC was the source of the disclosures."
Speaker gained notoriety and became the first U.S. citizen quarantined by the government since 1963 when he was sent to a hospital in Denver for a perilous form of tuberculosis after returning from his wedding in Europe.
Speaker flew from Atlanta to Paris and on to Greece for his wedding and to Rome for his honeymoon.
CDC said it did not know Speaker was leaving Atlanta and by doing so he violated its trust. But in an interview, Speaker said health authorities knew about the trip and were planning to start treatment on his return.
U.S. health authorities reached him in Rome and told him not to fly home on a commercial airliner, Speaker and his new wife fled to Prague for a commercial flight to Montreal and reentered the United States overland by car.
He crossed a border into New York state even though his name was on a list to be detained due to medical reasons.
Speaker apologized on national television for traveling while infected but later sued CDC. It emerged he was infected with a less serious form of the disease.
Speaker said the ruling was "fantastic."
CDC "was just trying to create a bunch of media frenzy so they could get more funding and they didn't care who got hurt in the midst of doing it," he said.
In his initial complaint, Speaker alleged "CDC caused personally identifiable information about to be improperly disclosed without his consent to law enforcement officials" in order to make an example out of him.
A district court dismissed the suit on the grounds Speaker had presented insufficient evidence the CDC was to blame for violating his privacy.
The court ruling in case number 09-01137-CV-WSD-1 was on Andrew Harley Speaker versus the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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