Loyola Sent Litigation Hold Notice Related to Ex-UMich Coach Privacy Suit

As a part of an ongoing lawsuit against former University of Michigan football coach Matthew Weiss, Loyola received a notice April 8 with instructions to preserve all personal information of student-athletes from 2015 to 2020.

Weiss was indicted in March and is accused of illegally obtaining the private information of over 150,000 student-athletes from universities across the country, according to Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller, an attorney for a group of 11 plaintiffs suing the ex-coach.

If Loyola fails to preserve the requested information or act to take all reasonable steps to prevent the transformation or destruction of the evidence, the court may place sanctions on the defendants in the case, according to the notice. 

One of the 11 plaintiffs Esser-Weidenfeller represents, listed as Jane Doe 11 in the suit, attended the University of Maryland and Loyola from 2017 to 2021 while playing volleyball. Jane Doe 11 lives in Chicago and received a notice from the Department of Justice alerting her that her privacy was breached, according to the suit.

Alongside Weiss, the Regents of the University of Michigan, the University of Michigan and Keffer Development Services, LLC are also named as defendants. Keffer maintains the Athletic Trainer System, an electronic health record system used by the sports medicine community.

The Jane Doe represented in the preservation notice is a former Loyola student athlete who attended the university from 2015 to 2020.

“According to the indictment, Weiss hacked into the accounts of thousands of student athlete accounts at colleges and universities around the country, including that of Jane Doe,” the notice reads. “Ms. Doe’s electronically stored data was housed and stored by your University database.”

Esser-Weidenfeller wrote on her firm’s website that Weiss is accused of hacking personal data from student athletes, “including possible victims at Loyola University Chicago.” 

She told The Phoenix there were “quite a few” additional Loyola student athletes who were all women in volleyball, golf, soccer, track and cross country beyond Jane Doe 11, whose privacy may have been breached.
A Loyola spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment. Weiss’ lawyer Douglass Mullkoff didn’t respond to requests for comment. WGN9 first reported on the preservation notice.