## Facts

- Two insurance companies retained an injury-claims investigative service to obtain medical information about two hospital patients who had filed claims.
- An investigator, using telephone calls, obtained verbatim readings of medical reports from a hospital employee, then transcribed and provided the information to the insurers.
- The physical medical records remained in the hospital’s file room; only the information contained in the records was acquired.
- The prosecution charged the insurers with theft and related offenses, alleging that confidential medical information (or the patients’ confidentiality interest) constituted a “thing of value” under Colorado’s theft statute.
- After the prosecution rested, the trial court dismissed all theft and theft-related counts, ruling the medical information was not a statutory “thing of value.”
- The prosecution appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether confidential medical information, or the confidentiality interest in that information, is a “thing of value” within Colorado’s theft statute so that unauthorized acquisition by deception can support theft charges.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of the theft and theft-related counts.
- Confidential medical information, and the confidentiality interest in nondisclosure, is not a “thing of value” within the theft statute’s scope.
- Because the charged conduct did not fit the statutory definition of theft, criminal liability could not be imposed on that theory.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal statutes are strictly construed in favor of the accused; courts may not expand criminal liability by implication beyond the legislature’s clear terms.
- The theft statute’s reference to “anything of value,” including “intangible personal property,” does not extend to every privacy or confidentiality interest absent clear legislative direction.
- Legislative intent may be inferred from the broader statutory scheme; when the legislature criminalizes misuse of particular categories of information, it typically does so expressly rather than through general theft provisions.
- Improper acquisition or disclosure of confidential medical information may implicate civil remedies (including privacy-based tort theories) or other specific statutes, but it is not theft under the general theft statute without a qualifying “thing of value” as defined.

## Conclusion

The court held that confidential medical information and the patients’ interest in its confidentiality are not “things of value” for purposes of Colorado’s theft statute, so the insurers’ alleged deceptive acquisition of that information could not support theft charges, and the trial court’s dismissal was properly affirmed.


People v. Home Ins. Co., 591 P.2d 1036 (Colo. 1979)