Whitaker v. Appriss, Inc., 266 F. Supp. 3d 1103

Background

Indiana State Police contracted with Appriss to run ARIES, an electronic crash-report system; completed crash reports were uploaded to Appriss’s site and sold to the public/subscribers for fees.
Officers could populate crash reports either by typing information or by scanning barcodes on drivers’ licenses/registrations; the barcode scanning read data printed on the license and did not query the BMV database in the two incidents at issue.
Plaintiffs Whitaker and Dunkin gave their licenses at accident scenes; their ARIES reports were later purchased by third-party businesses that used the information to solicit them.
Plaintiffs sued Appriss under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), seeking statutory damages; the case survived earlier motions, discovery proceeded, and Appriss moved for summary judgment.
The central factual dispute concerned whether officers obtained the plaintiffs’ personal data from the BMV (a motor vehicle record) or directly from the plaintiffs’ licenses at the scene.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the name, address, and license number taken from a license handed to an officer are “personal information, from a motor vehicle record” under the DPPA	Whitaker/Dunkin: data printed on a license is part of a motor vehicle record and thus DPPA-protected when disclosed	Appriss: information came from the license holders (or from forms filled at scene), not from the DMV; barcode read of printed license did not access DMV records, so DPPA does not apply	Court: Not DPPA-protected—information scanned/written from a license handed to an officer is not “personal information from a motor vehicle record” under the DPPA
Whether the driver’s license itself qualifies as the relevant “motor vehicle record” under 18 U.S.C. § 2725(1)	Plaintiffs: the license (and its printed data) ‘pertains to’ or is part of the motor vehicle operator’s permit and thus is within the statute	Appriss: the license is an operator’s permit; the relevant DMV record is the database entry underlying issuance; treating the printed license as the DMV record would expand liability beyond Congress’s intent	Court: The license itself is not the DMV record; the relevant DMV record is the underlying database/record maintained by the DMV, not the printed license data handed to a non-DMV actor
Whether involuntariness of disclosure (e.g., requirement to show license after accident) makes the data DPPA-protected	Plaintiffs: statutory or practical compulsion to show licenses at accidents means disclosure wasn’t voluntary and should remain DPPA-covered	Appriss: voluntariness not determinative; statute focuses on source of information, not how it was handed over	Court: Declines to adopt a voluntariness requirement; statute does not turn on whether disclosure was voluntary
Applicability of earlier law-of-the-case rulings (e.g., reliance on Senne) to compel a different outcome	Plaintiffs: prior rulings suggested DMV-origin information remains protected wherever it travels	Appriss: earlier rulings do not require DPPA liability here because the information did not originate from DMV queries	Court: Law-of-the-case did not decisively resolve whether data scanned from a license without accessing DMV records is a DMV-origin record; court analyzes statute and precedent and grants summary judgment for Appriss

Key Cases Cited

Senne v. Village of Palatine, 695 F.3d 597 (7th Cir.) (DPPA protects information obtained from DMV records used in municipal enforcement documents)
Lake v. Neal, 585 F.3d 1059 (7th Cir.) (statutory interpretation of “pertains”)
Maracich v. Spears, 570 U.S. 48 (2013) (Congress enacted DPPA to curb misuse and sale of DMV-held personal information)
Pavone v. Law Offices of Anthony Mancini, Ltd., 205 F. Supp. 3d 961 (N.D. Ill.) (held license data can be treated as part of motor vehicle record; court here disagreed with that approach)
Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016) (Article III standing guidance cited in procedural history)