Andrew Grosso & Associates, a District of Columbia law firm, announced today the service of a lawsuit brought by Marc Stolowitz against Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nuance), a software technology company based in Burlington, Massachusetts. The allegations in the lawsuit include the following.

While employed by Nuance, Mr. Stolowitz learned that the company’s computer systems, containing Protected Health Information (PHI) of millions of patients belonging to health care providers who were clients of Nuance, had security flaws that made the PHI publicly available. This was known by Nuance through emails transmitted within the company.

More than a year after leaving the company, Mr. Stolowitz realized that Nuance had not fixed the problem. He downloaded patient records for the purpose of providing them to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services so as to document the PHI’s public accessibility. Nuance contacted the FBI, falsely accusing Mr. Stolowitz of unlawful hacking its computers in order to obtain these records when in fact Nuance had made them publicly available on the Internet. As a result of these false allegations, the FBI started proceedings against Mr. Stolowitz, including the execution of a search warrant on his premises. The proceedings were eventually terminated as the truth became known. Nuance also falsely asserted in an SEC filing that an individual had “illegally accessed” Nuance’s computers to get these records.

The lawsuit accuses Nuance of fraud, malicious prosecution, and defamation. The case is Marc Stolowitz v. Nuance Communications, Inc., Case No. 2021-026329-CA-0, filed in Circuit Court of the 11th Judicial Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida. Mr. Stolowitz is represented by Andrew Grosso & Associates, a law firm concentrating in cyberlaw issues (www.GrossoLaw.com).