The city of Calgary is facing a $92.9 million lawsuit for allegedly breaching the privacy rights of its employees.
The suit, filed Tuesday, alleged a privacy breach in June 2016. The document claims that a city staffer sent an email to an employee of another Alberta municipality which contained the personal information of 3,716 municipal employees.
The information allegedly leaked by the email was contained in Workers’ Compensation Board claim details. Information such as medical records, Social Insurance Numbers, addresses, dates of birth, Alberta Health Care numbers and income details were potentially exposed.
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For its actions, the city was accused of “acting with the most obvious neglect,” court documents said.
“We don’t know whether the information was misused,” Patrick Higgerty, a lawyer who represents the plaintiffs, explained. “That creates a lot of anxiety.”
Calgary issued a public apology in August 2016 for what it called “human error.”
The information leaked had been collected over a period of time, from 2012 to 2016, CBC reported.
The city said then that an investigation revealed that the leak happened when a city employee was looking to receive technical assistance from a contact working at another municipality.
Calgary acting chief security officer Donald Von Hollen said at that time that officials believe the breach was not malicious in nature.
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