Judge: CMPD wrongly shared drivers' data
Judge: CMPD wrongly shared drivers' data
City could be forced to pay $2,500 per occurrance, but it is appealing the ruling
The following article appeared in the Nov. 4, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Court rules CMPD improperly shared personal information with ‘ambulance chasers,’ who sent unwanted marketing letters; certifies class-action covering 6,000 local drivers involved in wrecks
A federal lawsuit alleges Charlotte-Meckleburg Police improperly released confidential information of drivers involved in vehicle accidents. A judge agreed and granted class-action status affecting around 6,000 local drivers. The city is appealing. (AI-generated photo illustration/Grok)
By Tony Mecia
Thousands of Charlotte drivers could be in line for a big payout, following a recent ruling by a federal judge that said the city’s release of motor vehicle accident reports violated the law.
In a 43-page decision, federal district court Judge Robert Conrad sided with a Charlotte woman involved in an accident in 2017 who said she received marketing letters from personal injury lawyers after her wreck and alleged that the city improperly released her confidential information on accident reports.
A federal law prohibits the release of motor vehicle records to unauthorized people. But the evidence showed that until 2020, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police routinely placed information from the Division of Motor Vehicles on accident reports and allowed the release of those reports to the public — including to a company that sold the information to law firms that police regarded as “ambulance chasers,” the judge wrote.
In a rare move, the judge ruled that the evidence against the city of Charlotte was so clear that he sided with the woman without ordering a trial, known in legal terms as granting summary judgment. And he certified the suit as a class-action lawsuit, meaning that others whose information was similarly disclosed can be included as part of the case.
The law says that courts can award damages of $2,500 per occurrence. The suit says there were approximately 6,000 people involved in Charlotte vehicle accidents between 2014 and 2018 whose records were released and meet the eligibility criteria for a payout. That could mean an eventual judgment against the city of $15M or more.
Those additional people have not yet been notified that they could be included in the lawsuit, a lawyer involved in the case told The Ledger. The city of Charlotte is appealing the ruling, which was released in late September.
“Potentially, it is a big deal,” said David Stradley of the Raleigh law firm White & Stradley, who is representing the Charlotte woman who received the marketing materials after her wreck. “… It’s certainly not an insignificant amount of money.”
Asked if it was common for cities to release accident reports that contained DMV information, Stradley said: “It was until we started suing people for it.” He said his firm has filed other cases against law firms that used information from accident forms.
The city of Charlotte, in its appeal filed last month, says Conrad’s ruling is “unprecedented in any court.” In its appellate brief, the city argues that the information released does not constitute “motor vehicle records” as defined by the federal law, which it says also doesn’t apply to municipalities.
A city spokesman declined to comment on the case on Friday, citing ongoing litigation.
The suit says the information that was impermissibly released consisted of the names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth and phone numbers of people involved in accidents. It says the city previously knew that personal injury lawyers, chiropractors and auto repair shops would use the reports to target potential customers with direct mail.
When the plaintiff received marketing letters after her December 2017 wreck, for which she was not responsible, “she was shocked and upset that advertisers could so quickly learn that she had been in a wreck and so quickly get so much relevant personal information about her, and she questioned how that could possibly be legal,” according to court documents.
Nowadays, CMPD requires that people seeking to access crash records complete a form and show ID to prove that they have a legal right to obtain the reports, which are mostly limited to people involved in wrecks. Previously, anyone could receive a printed accident report from the CMPD records desk, and the requests were not tracked.
The case, which was filed in 2021, could continue for months or years before there’s a final resolution.
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman