We've been featured in:

Solicitors Sent Wrong Medical Records – Can I Claim Compensation?

This guide whether claims could be made if solicitors sent the wrong medical records to another party. The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) considers health data to be a sensitive category of personal data, and the data has special protections. A law firm could breach your data protection rights by disclosing the data without a lawful basis to do so. In this case, you could claim compensation.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the regulatory body that upholds the data rights of data subjects. Data subject is the term for a natural person to whom personal data relates.

Solicitors sent wrong medical records data breach claims guide

Solicitors sent wrong medical records data breach claims guide

Please contact us today to see if you can claim compensation for a medical records data breach by a solicitor. An advisor will speak to you about your circumstances. If you have sufficient evidence to support your claim, you could work with one of our data breach solicitors to get you the compensation you deserve.

Please make your enquiry about claiming if solicitors sent the wrong medical records today:

  • Call us today on 0800 073 8804
  • Contact us online to see if you can claim
  • Use our advice widget to ask us a question

Select A Section

What Are Medical Data Breaches By Solicitors?

A data breach is a kind of security incident that affects the confidentiality, integrity or availability of personal data. Personal data is any information that has been processed and that can be used to identify someone, either alone or when it’s put together with other information.

Solicitors may need to have access to your medical records when they handle personal injury claims. Furthermore, these medical records might need to be sent elsewhere, such as to a third party.

If your solicitor sent your medical records to the defendant in another case, this would be considered a data breach. If this caused you harm, then you may be entitled to claim compensation.

The UK GDPR requires that data controllers and processors adhere to data protection law in protecting personal data. A data controller decides how and why personal data is processed, whereas a processor can process personal data on their behalf. However, both must adhere to data protection laws.

Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records – Did They Break The Law?

Under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR, businesses must protect the data they process. This means that they must have a lawful basis for processing personal data.

Furthermore, organisations that are responsible for processing personal data need to adhere to the key principles that should lie at the heart of data processing. They are as follows:

  • Purpose limitation
  • Accuracy
  • Storage limitation
  • Integrity and confidentiality
  • Data minimisation
  • Accountability
  • Lawfulness, fairness and transparency

If an organisation fails to adhere to the above, then they are in breach of data protection law. However, you cannot claim just because the data controller or processor did not adhere to these principles. A data breach must have occurred that exposed your personal data and caused you harm in order to claim.

For more information on claiming if solicitors sent the wrong medical records out, then speak with a member of our team today.

What Medical Records Could Be Involved?

Data concerning your health is considered special category data. This is data that requires special protection because of its sensitive nature.

A data breach by a solicitor may expose the following medical information:

  • Information about a current health condition
  • Details of past health conditions
  • The results of a medical assessment carried out as part of a claim
  • Details of treatments that the data subject is undergoing

If solicitors sent the wrong medical records when working on a claim, then this could be harmful to the data subject. They could experience mental injuries at the thought of their sensitive data being shared with unauthorised parties. Furthermore, they could be affected financially.

For free legal advice about making this kind of claim, speak with an advisor today.

How Could Medical Records Be Missent?

Below, we have included some examples of how a solicitor medical data breach could occur:

  • A solicitor sends a client’s medical data to the wrong email address, and the person it was sent to does not have authorisation to view this information
  • The solicitor can post the medical records to the wrong address.
  • A solicitors firm allows an employee unauthorised access to medical records because of poor password management.
  • An email data breach can happen if the solicitor attaches the wrong medical records.
  • A solicitor can share the wrong medical records with a third party by post.

This is not an exhaustive list of the ways that personal data could be breached. If you would like to know whether you have a valid case for claiming if solicitors sent the wrong medical records, speak with a member of our team today.

Can You Claim If Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records?

If the wrongful conduct of a solicitor was responsible for personal data relating to your medical records being exposed, you could be entitled to claim compensation. To make a successful claim, you will need evidence to prove the solicitor’s firm breached your data because it failed to comply with data protection regulations.

You also need to show that you experienced financial and/or emotional harm because of the breach. If a breach occurred but it did not affect you in any way, then you’d be unable to pursue compensation.

Please call Legal Expert to see if you have a valid reason to claim. If you do, you could be connected with one of our lawyers to work on your case.

Solicitors Sent The Wrong Medical Records; What Could I Claim?

If a solicitor breached your medical records, you might be eligible to claim compensation. You can receive compensation for both material and non-material damage.

Material damage refers to the financial harm that the breach has caused you. For example, in a bank data breach, someone may be able to steal money from your account. If your credit or debit card details were exposed, then this could result in an impact on your credit score. You could also experience a loss of earnings if a data breach caused mental harm that meant you had to take time off work.

Non-material damage, on the other hand, refers to the emotional harm you were caused. For example, a data breach could cause you stress and anxiety if it means you’re unsure who has access to your personal or sensitive data. In extreme cases, it could result in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Please use our data breach compensation table to see how much you could potentially receive in a claim. The Judicial College guidelines were used to create the compensation brackets in the table below; this is a publication that legal professionals use to help them value claims, and it was last updated in 2022. However, if your claim succeeds, the final amount of compensation you receive may vary.

Edit
The Injury Information On This Injury Possible Settlement
General Psychological Injury The injury causes severe issues across all parts of this claimant’s life. There is a very poor prognosis for making any recovery. Severe – £54,830 to £115,730
General Psychological Injury The injury could leave the person with a long-term disability. There is a greater chance of the condition improving than in more severe cases. Moderately Severe – £19,070 to £54,830
General Psychological Injury There will have been the kinds of problems affecting all areas of life as in other brackets of this kind of injury. There is a better chance of improvement, however. Moderate – £5,860 to £19,070
General Psychological Injury The amount that is awarded will take several considerations into account, including the impact of the injury on sleep and how long the effects lasted for. Less Severe – £1,540 to £5,860
Reactive Psychiatric Disorder The claimant has been permanently impacted. The injury has caused considerable changes to the person’s life; for example, lack of employment prospects and impact on ability to function. Severe – £59,860 to £100,670
Reactive Psychiatric Disorder The person has a better prognosis for recovery with the help of professional treatment. Moderately Severe – £23,150 to £59,860
Reactive Psychiatric Disorder Following a significant improvement, the person only has minor issues that persist. Moderate – £8,180 to £23,150
Reactive Psychiatric Disorder In under 24 months the person has made a full or virtually full recovery. Less Severe – £3,950 to £8,180

You are welcome to call Legal Expert, and an advisor can offer you a personalised claim valuation. They can also confirm when claims could be made after solicitors have sent the wrong medical records.

Talk To Us About No Win No Fee Agreements

Please contact us if you wish to claim compensation for a data breach by a solicitor. If we can see that you are eligible to claim, we can handle your case on a No Win No Fee basis. A popular form of No Win No Fee agreement that you could be offered is a Conditional Fee Agreement.

When you make a No Win No Fee claim, you will usually not have to pay a solicitors fee upfront in order for them to start working on your claim or as it progresses. Furthermore, you generally do not pay your lawyer for their services if your claim is not a success.

You will pay a success fee if you win your No Win No Fee data breach claim. The success fee is legally capped, so most of the compensation payment goes directly to you.

To enquire about claiming compensation after a data breach that happened when solicitors sent the wrong medical records, please contact us today:

  • Call Legal Expert on 0800 073 8804
  • Contact us online to request a callback
  • Use the Live Support widget to talk about your options with an advisor

Further Claims For Breaches Of Personal Data

Below, we have included links to more of our guides that you might find useful:

You may also benefit from reading the guides below:

A guide to consent and processing data from the Information Commissioner’s Office

Your right to be informed if your data is being used – an ICO guide

How to make a data protection complaint – a UK government guide

We hope this guide has informed you of the effects that can be felt if solicitors sent the wrong medical records and the steps you can take if this has affected you.

Written by Chelache

Edited by Stocks