A U.S. judge has tossed a class action lawsuit against dental service organization (DSO) Heartland Dental, which was accused of using a telephone service that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze patient phone calls without patients' knowledge.
Megan Lisota, a patient of the Heartland Dental-supported Tru Family Dental, failed to prove that the interception of her calls by the DSO and RingCentral AI, which monitored the practice’s phone calls, was protected by the U.S. Wiretap Act, according to a decision dated July 24 by Judge Lindsay Jenkins of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
“Though Lisota argues that defendants seek to destroy any limiting principle, the court concludes that the facts here fall well within the one that plainly exists,” according to the decision. “The exception therefore bars RingCentral’s liability for intercepting Lisota’s data and -- by extension -- Heartland’s liability for procuring the interception.”
In July 2025, Lisota filed the lawsuit on behalf of any U.S. resident who had any phone contact with Heartland Dental or any of its DSO-managed dental clinics. Heartland Dental is affiliated with more than 1,700 dental practices.
In the suit, Lisota claimed Heartland allowed RingCentral, which uses AI to transcribe, summarize, and analyze calls, to listen in on the calls and analyze them in real time. However, neither the DSO nor the practice reportedly informed Lisota and other patients. Furthermore, Lisota claimed she had no reason to believe that a third party was eavesdropping and analyzing her calls.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleged that RingCentral uses patient calls for its own purposes. It reportedly uses these calls to train its AI models and develop products and services for other customers.
