Minnesota

The ruling stemmed from a suit by a Twin Cities woman whose diagnosis of having a sexually transmitted disease showed up in 2006 on a MySpace social networking page that referred to the woman as "Rotten Candy," displayed her picture, and said she cheated on her husband and was addicted to plastic surgery.

The woman alleged that after she was found to have the disease at Fairview Cedar Ridge Clinic in Apple Valley, a medical assistant there read her file and conveyed the information to mutual relatives, including one who may have created the MySpace page, which was taken down a couple of days after its discovery.

The clinic eventually fired the employee for violating policy by accessing the patient's records, and the patient sued Fairview Clinics, the former employee and two other women who allegedly helped spread the information.

A district court ruled in favor of the defendants on several grounds -- including that she hadn't produced enough evidence, that the clinic couldn't be held liable for the unauthorized act of its employee, and the posting on MySpace didn't constitute "publicity" under the law. The court said that the woman had not proven that a sufficient number of people had seen the Web page.

But a three-judge Court of Appeals panel ruled that the MySpace posting did constitute publicity. What matters, the court said, isn't how many people saw the posting, but rather whether it was posted in a medium that conveys information directly to the public.

"We acknowledge that some public web pages might get little actual attention," the court said. "But the same may be said of a card posted on the door of a residence or a poster displayed in a shop window, each of which constitutes publicity."

The posting, the court said, "was a window [the woman's] enemies propped open for at least 24 hours, allowing any internet-connected voyeur access to private details of her life."

The Appeals Court also ruled that the district court applied the wrong legal analysis in deciding that the clinic couldn't be held "vicariously liable" for the actions of an employee. And it held that, contrary to the district court ruling, the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPPA], does not prevent the woman from recovering damages under a Minnesota law.

Therefore, the Appeals Court sent the case back to district court, with instructions to reconsider several of the woman's claims. Fairview spokesman Ryan Davenport declined to comment, saying hospital officials haven't had time to read the opinion.