Lawsuit filed against Dynacare for stolen flash drive



MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- A Milwaukee firefighter and his wife are suing over a missing flash drive that was stolen out of a Dynacare Laboratories vehicle. The flash drive was loaded with the personal information of thousands of City of Milwaukee employees.

Michael Wojnar and his wife have filed a class action lawsuit against Dynacare, which put the information on the flash drive, and Froedtert Health, which contracted Dynacare.

"It's not a simple situation like losing a credit card, where you just call the credit card company and get a new one," said Wojnar's attorney Doug Dehler. "We're talking about social security numbers, dates of birth, things that don't typically change."

The lawsuit claims 6,000 city employees and their spouses or domestic partners has personal information stored on a Dynacare flash drive. On October 22nd, a Dynacare employee left the drive in a car overnight and the car was stolen.

While the vehicle was later recovered, the flash drive was not.

"It's my hope it's in some garbage bin somewhere and not being used for illegal purposes, but we don't know that for certain," said Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

The lawsuit also claims Dynacare was negligent because the flash drive "contained unencrypted information of a highly sensitive nature."

As of now, there have been no claims of identity theft, but Dehler says those with compromised information are far from safe.

"It's something that they're going to deal with for many years to come," said Dehler. "It's not a simple fix, unfortunately, and our clients are very concerned and that's why they asked us to bring a lawsuit."

Dynacare says the information was on the flash drive due to travel between different city sites as part of a wellness program.

Both Dynacare and Froedtert declined to comment on the lawsuit.