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Ever fancied being a wing member of an Information Rights Tribunal? Well, for ten lucky applicants, your dreams can come true. Panopticon’s attention has been drawn to a Judicial Appointments Commission application process which opens in August (and closes in September) for ten new Information Rights lay members. You can find the details here. Appointees will sit in the First-tier Tribunal, and occasionally the Upper Tribunal, to hear FOIA, EIR and DPA appeals. Non-lawyer readers of this blog – and we know you are out there – should consider applying.

Christopher Knight

So, we approach the GDPR’s first birthday. You know what’s nice for birthdays? Fines. Really big ones. According to an article in today’s Times (paywall), significant GDPR monetary penalties from the ICO are imminent, around the 1-year mark for our new data protection regime. The Irish DPC is apparently limbering up likewise. And it also announced its investigation into Google’s Ad Exchange this week, which could develop into a very significant foray into online ad tech. Continue reading →

Sometimes the Easter Bunny comes bearing mysteriously non-egg shaped gifts to the data protection practitioner. The judgment of the always-worth-reading Warby J in Rudd v Bridle & J&S Bridle Ltd [2019] EWHC 893 (QB) is just such a delivery, albeit that this one appears to contain a high content of asbestos. Continue reading →

Following my post confirming that the Supreme Court has granted permission in Various Claimants v Morrison Supermarket Plc, I have had quite a few email queries as to the scope of the grounds of appeal. To put you in the picture, permission has been granted on all grounds. In a nutshell, this means that the Supreme Court will be considering: Continue reading →

In case you were wondering what had happened to this case, the Supreme Court has just confirmed that permission has been granted to Morrisons for it to appeal against the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Morrison Supermarkets PLC v Various Claimants [2018] EWCA Civ 2338. No doubt further updates will follow on Panopticon in due course.

Anya Proops QC

So after many of months of GDPR-related anguish, finally some good news for data controllers: with effect from last Saturday (6^th April), conditional fee agreement (CFA) success fees will no longer be recoverable from defendants in privacy or defamation proceedings, at least where the relevant CFA was entered into after 5 April.

The legislative story goes like this (deep breath!): Continue reading →