When visiting any kind of doctor, for whatever reason, many patients expect some level of privacy. Certainly, that’s what a woman expected when she visited a plastic surgeon team for a breast augmentation surgery. Unfortunately for her, her surgeons “allegedly posted before-and-after photos of her surgery on their website without her consent,” and now she is suing the south suburban plastic surgeons who operated on her for violating her privacy.
When visiting any kind of doctor, for whatever reason, many patients expect some level of privacy. Certainly, that’s what a woman expected when she visited a plastic surgeon team for a breast augmentation surgery. Unfortunately for her, her surgeons “allegedly posted before-and-after photos of her surgery on their website without her consent,” and now she is suing the south suburban plastic surgeons who operated on her for violating her privacy.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this month in Cook County Circuit Court, and was filed in large part because the woman, identified in the lawsuit as “Jane Doe,” feels she was humiliated “by the release of the photos” and now suffers “intense fear that her close family members” will discover the pictures. According to her, she has a “highly distinctive freckle pattern on her chest which is highly recognizable by friends and family.”
Jane Doe’s attorney, Kevin O’Brien, said his client is a “mother in her mid-40s who lives in the Chicago area” and was absolutely “shocked” to discover her photos online, especially considering the fact that she “specifically refused permission for Dr. Rajendra Shah and his son Dr. Samir Shah to use the images for marketing purposes.”
After reaching out to the surgeons about the matter, the practice removed the photos from their A New You Plastic Surgery website. However, to Jane Doe, the damage had already been done. The surgeons had used before-and-after pictures of her surgery as a promotional tool online, so there was no telling how many people had seen the pictures before they were removed.
But if she specifically denied consent to have her photos posted online, how did they end up online in the first place? When did all of this occur? Well, it all began back in 2015 when Jane Doe visited the surgeon’s office for a “consultation about tummy tuck and breast augmentation surgery” and, according to the lawsuit, only “signed a waiver allowing photographs to be taken for medical use.” She was also handed a consent form to “allow the surgeons to use the photos for public advertising but crossed out that section and wrote she did not give her consent.” According to the lawsuit, she then told “Rajendra Shah she did not agree to have the photos used in that way.”
From there, the surgeons “took photos of her exposed torso on an iPhone” before the surgery and after the surgery that they later posted on their website “sometime after December 2015.” Unfortunately, they remained on the website for anyone to see for almost a year before Jane Doe discovered them.
As a result, Jane Doe is seeking “more than $50,000 in damages for violating Illinois’ privacy law and for negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Sources:
‘Humiliated’ woman sues surgeons for allegedly posting breast augmentation photos without consent
Woman’s Breast Augmentation Photos Used Without Permission By Orland Surgeons: Suit
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