Class action against RateMDs dismissed on appeal in B.C.

A B.C. appeals court has dismissed a class action lawsuit against RateMDs Inc., finding it had “no reasonable prospect of success.”The suit, brought forward by B.C. physician Dr. Ramona Bleuler, alleged that RateMDs—a platform that lists names and contact information of health professions and allows patients to write reviews and ratings—constituted a violation of privacy against the health professionals. In May 2024, a lower court certified the class action, finding that it was “not plain and obvious” that the action would fail. However, the appeals judges disagreed. “It follows that, in my view, the judge erred in concluding that a trial was necessary to determine the question of the appellants’ liability under s. 3(2) of the B.C. Privacy Act. Assuming the pleaded facts to be true, this claim also has no reasonable prospect of success,” Justice Karen Horsman of the Court of Appeal wrote in her decision.Dr. Bleuler argued that the fact that she had a profile on RateMDs was a violation of privacy and unauthorized use of her name and portrait under the province’s Privacy Act. However, the court ruled that there can be no violation of privacy if there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the information itself, noting that the names and business contact details of the health professions on the platform are already publicly available from the regulatory colleges’ websites.“In this context, it simply cannot be said that a health professional has a reasonable expectation that information about their services is private, and that they can exercise control over which websites will be permitted to publish this type of information,” Justice Horsman wrote.On the issue of privacy, Dr. Bleuler argued that her complaint centred around “privacy as control,” or the right of an individual to determine how and when information about themselves are communicated, and that privacy rights do not “vanish” simply because the information is in the public domain.However, the judges disagreed and said Dr. Bleuler’s claims had “no support in case law,” and that the right to “privacy as control” only applies when the information is private to begin with. “There is no question that the respondent does not wish to have a profile on RateMDs.com. She may have legitimate concern about the business model on which RateMDs.com operates. However, her objection to having her professional and public information published on RateMDs.com does not translate into a reasonable expectation of privacy,” the decision continues.For the claim that RateMDs was violating the torts that govern unauthorized use of name or portrait, Dr. Bleuler characterized the website as a “for-profit venture that profits from the aggregating of the names,” arguing that her name was being exploited for the website’s commercial gain.However, the court noted a distinction between “sales” and “subjects” for the purposes of the unauthorized use of name tort. A violation of this tort occurs when a person’s image is being commercially exploited for “sales” purposes, such as claiming endorsement from a celebrity to sell a product.For this case, the court concluded that this was a “subject” case, which is not a violation of this tort. The judges agreed that the health professionals featured on RateMDs were considered the subjects of the work, in a similar manner to the subjects of a newspaper or magazine article.“On the pleaded facts, it is plain and obvious that the plaintiff’s name, and the names of class members, are not being commercially exploited for the purpose of increasing sales,” the judge wrote.

Class action against RateMDs dismissed on appeal in B.C.

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