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Significant UK Court Ruling on Data Protection Liability

By Andr' Bywater and Gayle McFarlane
September 02, 2015

The UK's Court of Appeal gave a very important judgment in March 2015 in the so-called Vidal-Hall case concerning Google's Internet behavior tracking through a browser. The court found that: first, misuse of private information is now classified as a tort, thereby in this case enabling proceedings to be issued against a party outside the jurisdiction of the UK; and, second, financial compensation for distress caused by breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the DPA 1998) may now be claimed, despite there being no monetary loss, the UK legal provision that had to date prevented this having now been disapplied by the Court of Appeal.

This case is particularly important because litigation for data protection infringements is rising steadily and following this ruling the legal footing upon which to obtain compensation in court claims for data protection infringements has, for the moment at least, moved forward significantly and may pave the way in general for class actions. But, permission to appeal the Court of Appeal's ruling to the highest court in the UK, the Supreme Court, has just been allowed by that latter court, and so we will have to wait and see before drawing any final conclusions.

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