Tag: damages

Multi-billion dollar actions for inaccurate personal data?

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

Data protection has developed a curious habit of churning up heroic (or anti-heroic, depending on how you view it) figures who take on global behemoths to surprising effect. Maybe I am being too dramatic, but think of Mario Costeja González, the complainant at the heart of the Google Spain ‘right to be forgotten’ case, and Max Schrems, whose litigation has thrown Safe Harbor and transatlantic data transfers into turmoil.

If we maintain a transatlantic gaze, another such figure comes into view. On Monday of this week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard argument in the case of Spokeo Inc v Thomas Robins. Mr Robins – the potential David in this important new David v Goliath episode – is at the forefront of litigation against the ‘people search engine’ Spokeo (see Anya’s earlier post here).

The profile Spokeo compiled about him said he was a graduate, a professional in his 50s and a married man with children. Hardly defamatory stuff, except that none of it was correct. He did not establish that these errors caused him any financial loss, but he seeks damages for the publication of factually incorrect information about his life.

So what, you say? Well, consider the Amicus Briefs put before SCOTUS by Ebay, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. They all say that this is a very big deal. They point out that, as major global tech innovators, they are exposed to numerous federal and state laws which contain statutory damages provisions for private causes of actions. If standing is granted for “no injury” lawsuits “plaintiffs may pursue suits against amici even where they are not actually harmed by an alleged statutory violation, and in certain circumstances, seek class action damages that could run into the billions of dollars”.

The issues in Robins (should you be compensated for mere breaches or for ‘digital injuries’?) resonate with live issues before the courts in the UK: can you be compensated under the Data Protection Act 1998 for mere distress (see Vidal-Hall v Google, en route to the Supreme Court)? How should one compensate for privacy violations (see Gulati, on which the Court of Appeal’s judgment is awaited)?
Regardless of whether Mr Robins emerges as a Goliath-slayer, his case adds to the law’s increasingly intense scrutiny of global tech companies whose stock in trade is personal data.

Robin Hopkins @hopkinsrobin

Court of Appeal considers damages for privacy breaches – data protection to follow suit?

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

This week, the Court of Appeal is grappling with a difficult and important question: how do you value an invasion of privacy? In other words, where someone has suffered a breach of their privacy rights, how do you go about determining the compensation they should receive?

The appeal is brought by MGN against the judgment of Mann J in Gulati & Ors v MGN Ltd [2015] EWHC 1482 (Ch). That judgment concerned victims of blagging and phone-hacking (including Paul Gascoigne, Sadie Frost and Alan Yentob) for which Mirror Group Newspapers was held responsible.

Mann J awarded the claimants compensation ranging between £85,000 and £260,250. His judgment was ground-breaking, in part due to the size of those awards. (By way of comparison, the previous highest award in a privacy case had been made to Max Mosely, in the region of £60,000 – but most awards have been much lower).

It was also ground-breaking in terms of the methodology adopted to calculate quantum for privacy breaches. Here is how Mann J summarised the rival arguments (paragraph 108; I have underlined the components put forward by the claimants):

“… The case of the claimants is that the compensation should have several elements.  There is compensation for loss of privacy or “autonomy” resulting from the hacking or blagging that went on; there is compensation for injury to feelings (including distress); and there is compensation for “damage or affront to dignity or standing”.  The defendant disputes this and submits that all that can be compensated for is distress or injury to feelings…  It is accepted that such things as loss of autonomy are relevant, but only as causes of the distress which is then compensated for.  They are not capable of sustaining separate heads of compensation…”

As is clear from that synopsis, the debate is not just about money, observable cause-and-effect or hard-edged law. The debate also has difficult philosophical and ethical dimensions. It seems that neither society nor the law (which sometimes overlap) has yet got to the bottom of what it really means to have one’s privacy invaded.

In any event, Mann J certainly did his bit to progress that debate. He preferred the analysis of the claimants – hence the large awards they received. See for example his paragraphs 143-144:

“… The tort is not a right to be prevented from upset in a particular way.  It is a right to have one’s privacy respected.  Misappropriating (misusing) private information without causing “upset” is still a wrong.  I fail to see why it should not, of itself, attract damages.  Otherwise the right becomes empty, contrary to what the European jurisprudence requires.  Upset adds another basis for damages; it does not provide the only basis. I shall therefore approach the consideration of quantum in this case on the footing that compensation can be given for things other than distress, and in particular can be given for the commission of the wrong itself so far as that commission impacts on the values protected by the right.”

The Court of Appeal’s judgment in MGN’s appeal will have a huge impact on the size of awards in privacy cases, and thereby on the privacy litigation landscape itself. It will also no doubt contribute to our understanding of how 21st-century society values (or ought to value) privacy.

What impact will it have on compensation under section 13 of the Data Protection Act 1998?

As with privacy compensation, data protection compensation is having a revolutionary year: see the striking down of section 13(2) in Vidal-Hall v Google [2015] EWCA Civ 311. Traditionally, few people brought claims under section 13 DPA, because it was assumed that they could only be compensated for distress (their primary complaint) if they also suffered financial loss (which mostly they hadn’t). Vidal-Hall overturned that: you can be compensated for distress alone under section 13 DPA. This point will be considered by the Supreme Court next year, but for now, the removal of this barrier to successful section 13 claims is hugely important.

Another barrier, however, lingers: section 13 DPA awards tend to be discouragingly low, from a claimant’s perspective. See most crucially Halliday v Creation Consumer Finance [2013] EWCA Civ 333 (where an award for £750 was made): “the sum to be awarded should be of a relatively modest nature since it is not the intention of the legislation to produce some kind of substantial award. It is intended to be compensation…” (per Arden LJ at paragraph 36).

Increasingly, however, case law emphasises the intimate relationship between data protection and fundamental privacy rights: see for example Vidal-Hall, and last year’s ‘right to be forgotten’ judgment in the Google Spain case.

So, if Mann J’s wide, claimant-friendly approach to quantifying damages is upheld in the privacy context, how long before the same approach infiltrates data protection litigation?

Robin Hopkins @hopkinsrobin

Privacy and data protection – summer roundup

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

August tends to be a quiet month for lawyers. There has, however, been little by way of a summer break in privacy and data protection developments. Here are some August highlights.

Privacy injunction: sexual affairs of sportsman (not philosophers)

Mrs Justice Laing’s August does not appear to have begun restfully. Following a telephone hearing on the afternoon of Saturday 1 August, she granted what became a widely-reported privacy injunction (lasting only until 5 August) restraining the publication of a story about an affair which a prominent sportsman had some years ago: see the judgment in AMC and KLJ v News Group Newspapers [2015] EWHC 2361 (QB).

As usual in such cases, Article 8 and Article 10 rights were relied upon to competing ends. There is no automatic favourite in such contests – an intense focus on the facts is required.

In this case, notwithstanding submissions about the extent to which the affected individuals ‘courted publicity’ or were not ‘private persons’ – there was a reasonable expectation of privacy about a secret sexual affair conducted years ago. The interference needed to be justified.

The right to free expression did not constitute adequate justification without more: “I cannot balance these two incommensurables [Articles 8 and 10] without asking why, and for what purposes, X and R seek to exercise their article 10 rights… The public interest here is, I remind myself, a contribution to a debate in the general interest”.

On the facts, there was insufficient public interest to justify that interference. The sportsman was not found to have hypocritically projected himself as ‘whiter than white’, and his alleged deceits and breaches of protocols in the coducting of his affair were not persuasive – especially years after the event. In any event, the sportsman was a role model for sportsmen or aspiring sportsmen: “he is not a role model for cooks, or for moral philosophers”. The latter point will no doubt be a weight off many a sporting shoulder.

Subject access requests: upcoming appeals

Subject access requests have traditionally received little attention in the courts. As with data protection matters more broadly, this is changing.

Holly Stout blogged earlier this month about the High Court’s judgment in Dawson-Damer and Ors v Taylor Wessing and Ors [2015] EWHC 2366 (Ch). The case concerned legal professional privilege, manual records and relevant filing systems, disproportionate searches and the court’s discretion under section 7(9) DPA. That case is on its way to the Court of Appeal.

So too is the case of Ittihadieh [2015] EWHC 1491 (QB), in which I appeared. That case concerned, among other issues, identification of relevant data controllers and the domestic purposes exemption. It too is on its way to the Court of Appeal.

Subject access requests: the burden of review and redaction

There has also been judgment this month in a County Court case in which I appeared for the Metropolitan Police Service. Mulcahy v MPS, a judgment of District Judge Langley in the Central London County Court, deals in part with the purposes behind a subject access request. It also deals with proportionality and burden, which – as Holly’s recent post discusses – has tended to be a vexed issue under the DPA (see Ezsias, Elliott, Dawson-Damer and the like).

Mulcahy deals with the proportionality of the burden imposed not so much by searching for information within the scope of a subject access request, but for reviewing (and, where necessary, redacting) that information before disclosure. This is an issue which commonly concerns data controllers. The judgment is available here: Mulcahy Judgment.

Privacy damages: Court of Appeal to hear Gulati appeal

May of 2015 saw Mr Justice Mann deliver a ground-breaking judgment on damages awards for privacy breaches: see Gulati & Ors v MGN Ltd [2015] EWHC 1482 (Ch), which concerned victims of phone-hacking (including Paul Gascoigne and Sadie Frost). The awards ranged between £85,000 and £260,250. The judgment and grounds of appeal against the levels of damages awards are explained in this post by Louise Turner of RPC.

Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal granted MGN permission to appeal. The appeal is likely to be expedited. It will not be long before there is a measure of certainty on quantum for privacy breaches.

ICO monetary penalties

Lastly, I turn to privacy-related financial sanctions of a different kind. August has seen the ICO issue two monetary penalty notices.

One was for £50,000 against ‘Stop the Calls’ (ironically, a company which markets devices for blocking unwanted marketing calls) for serious contraventions of regulation 21 of the Privacy and Electronic Regulations 2003 (direct marketing phone calls to persons who registered their opposition to such calls with the Telephone Preference Service).

Another was for £180,000 for a breach of the seventh data protection principle. It was made against The Money Shop following a burglary in which an unencrypted server containing customers’ personal information was stolen.

Robin Hopkins @hopkinsrobin

Google and the DPA – RIP section 13(2)

Posted on | by Christopher Knight

Well, isn’t this an exciting week (and I don’t mean Zayn leaving One Direction)? First, Evans and now Vidal-Hall. We only need Dransfield to appear before Easter and there will be a full red bus analogy. Robin opened yesterday’s analysis of Evans by remarking on the sexiness of FOIA. If there is one thing you learn quickly as an information law practitioner, it is not to engage in a sexiness battle with Robin Hopkins. But high-profile though Evans is, the judgment in Vidal-Hall will be of far wider significance to anyone having to actually work in the field, rather than simply tuning every now and then to see the Supreme Court say something constitutional against a FOIA background. Vidal-Hall might not be the immediate head-turner, but it is probably going to be the life-changer for most of us. So, while still in the ‘friend zone’ with the Court of Appeal, before it all gets serious, it is important to explain what Vidal-Hall v Google [2015] EWCA Civ 311 does.

The Context

The claims concern the collection by Google of information about the internet usage of Apple Safari using, by cookies. This is known as “browser generated information” or “BGI”. Not surprisingly, it is used by Google to more effectively target advertising at the user. Anyone who has experienced this sort of thing will know how bizarre it can sometimes get – the sudden appearance of adverts for maternity clothes which would appear on my computer followed eerily quickly from my having to research pregnancy information for a discrimination case I was doing. Apple Safari users had not given their consent to the collection of BGI. The Claimants brought claims for misuse of private information, breach of confidence and breach of the DPA, seeking damages under section 13. There is yet to be full trial; the current proceedings arise because of the need to serve out of the jurisdiction on Google.

The Issues

These were helpfully set out in the joint judgment of Lord Dyson MR and Sharp LJ (with whom Macfarlane LJ agreed) at [13]. (1) whether misuse of private info is a tort, (2) whether damages are recoverable under the DPA for mere distress, (3) whether there was a serious issue to be tried that the browser generated data was personal data and (4) whether permission to serve out should have been refused on Jameel principles (i.e. whether there was a real and substantial cause of action).

Issues (1) and (4) are less important to readers of this blog, and need only mention them briefly (#spoilers!). Following a lengthy recitation of the development of the case law, the Court held that the time had come to talk not of cabbages and kings, but of the tort of misuse of private information, rather than being an equitable action for breach of confidence: at [43], [50]-[51]. This allowed service out under the tort gateway in PD6B. The comment of the Court on issue (4) is worth noting, because it held that although claims for breach of the DPA would involve “relatively modest” sums in damages, that did not mean the claim was not worth the candle. On the contrary, “the damages may be small, but the issues of principle are large”: at [139].

Damages under Section 13 DPA

Issue (2) is the fun stuff for DP lawyers. As we all know, Johnson v MDU [2007] EWCA Civ 262 has long cast a baleful glare over the argument that one can recover section 13 damages for distress alone. The Court of Appeal have held such comments to be obiter and not binding on them: at [68]. The word ‘damage’ in Art 23 of the Directive had to be given an autonomous EU law meaning: at [72]. It also had to be construed widely having regard to the underlying aims of the legislation: the legislation was primarily designed to protect privacy not economic rights and it would be strange if data subjects could not recover compensation for an invasion of their privacy rights merely because they had not suffered pecuniary loss, especially given Article 8 ECHR does not impose such a bar: at [76]-[79]. However, it is not necessary to establish whether there has also been a breach of Article 8; the Directive is not so restricted (although something which does not breach Article 8 is unlikely to be serious enough to have caused distress): at [82].

What then to do about section 13(2) which squarely bars recovery for distress alone and is incompatible with that reading of Article 23? The Court held it could not be ‘read down’ under the Marleasing principle; Parliament had intended section 13(2) to impose this higher test, although there was nothing to suggest why it had done so: at [90]-[93]. The alternative was striking it down on the basis that it conflicted with Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which the Court of Appeal accepted. In this case, privacy and DP rights were enshrined as fundamental rights in the Charter; breach of DP rights meant that EU law rights were engaged; Article 47 of the Charter requires an effective remedy in respect of the breach; Article 47 itself had horizontal direct effect (as per the court’s conclusion in Benkharbouche v Embassy of Sudan [2015] EWCA Civ 33); the Court was compelled to disapply any domestic provision which offended against the relevant EU law requirement (in this case Article 23); and there could be no objections to any such disapplication in the present case e.g. on the ground that the Court was effectively recalibrating the legislative scheme: at [95]-[98], [105].

And thus, section 13(2) was no more. May it rest in peace. It has run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible.

What this means, of course, is a potential flood of DP litigation. All of a sudden, it will be worth bringing a claim for ‘mere’ distress even without pecuniary loss, and there can be no doubt many will do so. Every breach of the DPA now risks an affected data subject seeking damages. Those sums will invariably be small (no suggestion from the Court of Appeal that Article 23 requires a lot of money), and perhaps not every case will involve distress, but it will invariably be worth a try for the data subject. Legal costs defending such claims will increase. Any data controllers who were waiting for the new Regulation with its mega-fines before putting their house in order had better change their plans…

Was BGI Personal Data

For the DP geeks, much fun was still to be had with Issue (3). Google cannot identify a particular user by name; it only identifies particular browsers. If I search for nasal hair clippers on my Safari browser, Google wouldn’t recognise me walking down the street, no matter how hirsute my proboscis. The Court of Appeal did not need to determine the issue, it held only that there was a serious issue to be tried. Two main arguments were run. First, whether the BGI looked at in isolation was personal data (under section 1(1)(a) DPA); and secondly, whether the BGI was personal data when taken together with gmail account data held by Google (application of limb (b)).

On the first limb, the Court held that it was clearly arguable that the BGI was personal data. This was supported by the terms of the Directive, an Article 29 WP Opinion and the CJEU’s judgment in Lindqvist. The fact that the BGI data does not name the individual is immaterial: it clearly singles them out, individuates them and therefore directly identifies them: at [115] (see more detail at [116]-[121]).

On the second limb, it was also clearly arguable that the BGI was personal data. Google had argued that in practice G had no intention of amalgamating them, therefore there was no prospect of identification. The Court rejected this argument both on linguistic grounds (having regard to the wording of the definition of personal data, which does not require identification to actually occur) and on purposive grounds (having regard to the underlying purpose of the legislation): at [122]-[125].

A third route of identification, by which enable individual users could be identified by third parties who access the user’s device and then learn something about the user by virtue of the targeted advertising, the Court concluded it was a difficult question and the judge was not plainly wrong on the issue, and so it should be left for trial: at [126]-[133].

It will be interesting to see whether the trial happens. If it does, there could be some valuable judicial discussion on the nature of the identification question. For now, much is left as arguable.

Conclusion

The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Vidal-Hall is going to have massive consequences for DP in the UK. The disapplication of section 13(2) is probably the most important practical development since Durant, and arguably more so than that. Google are proposing to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, and given the nature of the issues they may well get it on Issues (1) and (2) at least. In meantime, the Court’s judgment will repay careful reading. And data controllers should start looking very anxiously over their shoulders. The death of their main shield in section 13(2) leaves them vulnerable, exposed and liable to death by a thousand small claims.

Anya Proops and Julian Milford appeared for the ICO, intervening in the Court of Appeal.

Christopher Knight

PS No judicial exclamation marks to be found in Vidal-Hall. Very restrained.

Damages under section 13 DPA: Court of Appeal’s judgment in Halliday

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

I blogged a while ago about the ex tempore judgment from the Court of Appeal in a potentially groundbreaking case on damages under section 13 of the DPA, namely Halliday v Creation Consumer Finance [2013] EWCA Civ 333. The point of potential importance was that ‘nominal damages’ appeared to suffice for the purposes of section 13(1), thereby opening up section 13(2). In short, the point is that claimants under the DPA cannot be compensated for distress unless they have also suffered financial harm. A ‘nominal damages’ approach to the concept of financial harm threatened to make the DPA’s compensation regime dramatically more claimant-friendly.

The Court of Appeal’s full judgment is now available. As pointed out on Jon Baines’ blog, ground has not been broken: the ‘nominal damages’ point was a concession by the defendant rather than a determination by the Court. See paragraph 3 of the judgment of Lady Justice Arden:

“… this issue, which was the main issue of the proposed appeal to this court, is now academic as the respondent, CCF, concedes an award of nominal damages is “damage” for the purposes of the Directive and for the purposes of section 13(2) of the Data Protection Act 1998.”

Other potentially important points have also fallen somewhat flat. The question of whether UK law provided an adequate remedy for a breach of a right conferred by a European Directive fell away on the facts (“proof fell short in relation to the question of damage to reputation and credit”), while the provision for sanctions under Article 24 of Directive 95/46/EC was neither directly enforceable to Mr Halliday nor of assistance to him.

Still, the judgment is not without its notable points.

One is the recognition that compensation for harm suffered is a distinct matter from penalties for wrongdoing; the former is a matter for the courts in the DPA context, the latter a matter for the Information Commissioner and his monetary penalty powers. Such was the implication of paragraph 11:

“… it is not the function of the civil court, unless specifically provided for, to impose sanctions. That is done in other parts of the judicial system.”

Another point worth noting is Lady Justice Arden’s analysis of distress and the causation thereof. The distress must be caused by the breach, not by other factors such as (in this case) a failure to comply with a court order. See paragraph 20:

“Focusing on subsection (2), it is clear that the claimant has to be an individual, that he has to have suffered distress, and that the distress has to have been caused by contravention by a data controller of any of the requirements of the Act. In other words, this is a remedy which is not for distress at large but only for contravention of the data processing requirements. It also has to be distress suffered by the complainant and therefore would not include distress suffered by family members unless it was also suffered by him. When I say that it has to be caused by breach of the requirements of the Act, the distress which I accept Mr Halliday would have felt at the non-compliance of the order is not, at least directly, relevant because that is not distress by reason of the contravention by a data controller of the requirements of this Act. If the sole cause of the distress had been non-compliance with a court order, then that would have lain outside the Act unless it could be shown that it was in substance about the non-compliance with the Data Protection Act.”

The claimant had sought to draw an analogy with guidelines and banding for discrimination awards as set by Vento v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2013] 1 ICR 31. The Court of Appeal was not attracted. See paragraph 26:

“In answer to that point, the field of discrimination is, it seems to me, not a helpful guide for the purposes of data protection. Discrimination is generally accompanied by loss of equality of opportunity with far-reaching effects and is liable to cause distinct and well-known distress to the complainant.”

Finally, Lady Justice Arden commented as follows concerning the level of the compensation to be awarded on the facts of this case: “in my judgment the sum to be awarded should be of a relatively modest nature since it is not the intention of the legislation to produce some kind of substantial award. It is intended to be compensation, and thus I would consider it sufficient to render an award in the sum of £750” (paragraph 36).

Lord Justice Lloyd (who, along with Mr Justice Ryder agreed with Lady Justice Arden) did pause to think about a submission on this question ‘if you were so distressed, why did you not complain immediately?’, but concluded that (paragraph 47):

“I confess that I was somewhat impressed at one point by Mr Capon’s submission that it was a surprise, if Mr Halliday was so distressed by this contravention, that he did not immediately protest upon discovering, in response to his first credit reference enquiry, the fact of the contravention, and indeed he did not protest until about a month after the second report had been obtained. But I bear in mind, in response to that, Mr Halliday’s comment that he had had such difficulty in getting any sensible response, or indeed any response, out of CCF at the earlier stage, that it is perhaps less surprising that he did not immediately protest. In any event, the period in question is not a very lengthy one between his discovery of the contravention by his first reference request and his taking action in July. Accordingly, it does not seem to me that that is a matter that should be taken to reduce my assessment of the degree of distress that he suffered.”

Robin Hopkins

Data protection: trends, possibilities and FOI disclosures

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

At 11KBW’s information law seminar in May, one of the discussion topics was ‘the future of data protection’. Here are some further thoughts on some interesting trends and developments.

Progress at the EU level

A major issue on this front is of course progress on the draft EU Data Protection Regulation – on which see this blog post from the ICO’s David Smith for an overview of the issues currently attracting the most debate. While that negotiation process runs its course, the Article 29 Working Party continues to provide influential guidance for users and regulators on some of the thorniest data protection issues. Its most recent opinion addresses purpose limitation, i.e. the circumstances under which data obtained for one purpose can be put to another. A summary of its views is available here.

Subject access requests

Turning to domestic DPA litigation in the UK, practitioners should watch out for a number of other developments (actual or potential) over the coming months. On the subject access request front, for example, data controllers have tended to take comfort from two themes in recent judgments (such as Elliott and Abadir, both reported on Panopticon). In short, the courts in those cases have agreed that (i) data controllers need only carry out reasonable and proportionate searches, and (ii) that section 7(9) claims being pursued for the collateral purpose of aiding other substantive litigation will be an abuse of process.

Data controllers should, however, note that neither of those points is free from doubt: there are plenty who doubt the legal soundness of the proportionality point, and the abuse of process point has arisen for section 7(9) claims to the court – it should not, in other words, be relied upon too readily to refuse requests themselves.

Damages

Damages under section 13 of the DPA is another area of potentially important change. The Halliday v Creation Consumer Finance case (briefly reported by Panopticon) has been given further discussion in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly here. Based on that information, perhaps the most interesting point is this: defendants have rightly taken comfort from the requirement under section 13 that compensation for distress can be awarded only where damage has also been suffered. In Halliday, however, nominal damages (of £1) were awarded, thereby apparently fulfilling the ‘damage’ requirement and opening the door for a ‘distress’ award (though note that Panopticon has not yet seen a full judgment from the Court of Appeal in this case, so do not take this as a definitive account). If that approach becomes standard practice, claimants may be in much stronger positions for seeking damages.

A further potential development on the damages front arises out of monetary penalty notices: data controllers who are subject to hefty penalties by the ICO may in some cases also find themselves facing section 13 claims from the affected data subjects themselves, presenting a worrying prospect of paying out twice for the same mistake.

Disclosure of personal data in the FOIA context

In general terms, requesters struggle to obtain the personal data of others through FOIA requests. A couple of very recent decisions have, however, gone the other way.

In White v IC and Carmarthenshire County Council (EA/2012/0238), the First-Tier Tribunal allowed the requester’s appeal and ordered disclosure of a list of licensed dog-breeders in the council’s area. In particular, it concluded that (paragraphs 21-23):

“…the Tribunal believes – on the facts of this case – that an important factor for any assessment in relation to the “fairness” of the disclosure of the personal data is best discovered from the context in which the personal data was provided to the Council in the first place.

22. The context, here, is to secure a commercial licence required by law to breed dogs. That license is necessary for the local authority to know who the licensed dog breeders in that area are, and so that the law can be enforced and welfare checks can be conducted as and when necessary in relation to the welfare of the dogs being bred commercially.

23. Licensing – in the ordinary course of things – is a public regulatory process. Indeed it was a public process in Carmarthenshire, in relation to the information that is at the core of this appeal, until the Council changed its policy in 2008.”

The Tribunal was unimpressed by the suggestive language of a survey of dog breeders which the council had carried out to support its case for non-disclosure. It also noted that a neighbouring council had disclosed such information.

The First-Tier Tribunal issued its decision in Dicker v IC (EA/2012/0250) today. It allowed the requester’s appeal and ordered disclosure of the salary of the chief executive of the NHS Surrey PCT over specified time periods, including total remuneration, expenses allowance, pension contributions and benefit details. As to legitimate interests in disclosure, the Tribunal said that (paragraph 13):

“In this case the arrangements (including secondment and recharge from another public authority at one stage) mean that the arrangements are not as transparent as might be wished and it is not entirely clear from the information published (as opposed to the assurances given) that the national pay guidance has been complied with. Mr Dicker asserted that the CEO was paid in excess of the national framework. The Tribunal was satisfied that there was a legitimate public interest in demonstrating that the national framework had been complied with and that the published information did not properly establish this”.

On the questions of distress and privacy infringements, the Tribunal took this view (paragraph 14):

“The CEO is a prominent public servant discharging heavy responsibilities who must expect to be scrutinised. Individuals in such circumstances are rational, efficient, hard-working and robust. They are fully entitled to a high degree of respect for their private lives. However the protection of personal information about their families and their health is a very different matter from having in the public domain information about income… The Tribunal simply cannot accept that anyone in such a role would feel the slightest distress, or consider that there has been any intrusion or that they would be prejudiced in any way by such information. From the perspective of the individual such information is essentially trivial; indeed, in other European societies, such information would be routinely available.”

If this approach were to become standard, the implications for public authorities would be significant.

Further, there are two very important personal data FOIA cases to look out for in the coming months. Following its decision in the Edem case late in 2012, the Upper Tribunal’s next consideration of personal data in the FOIA context is the appeal in the Morley v IC & Surrey Heath Borough Council (EA/2011/0173) case, in which the Tribunal – in a majority decision in which Facebook disclosures played a significant part – ordered the disclosure of names of certain youth councillors.

More importantly, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal from the Scottish Court of Session in July about a FOISA request for the number of individuals employed by the Council on specific points in the pay structure. The council relied on the personal data exemption (contending that individuals could be identified from the requested information), but the Scottish Information Commissioner ordered disclosure and succeeded before Scotland’s highest court. The Supreme Court will consider issues including the approach to ‘legitimate interests’ under condition 6(1) of schedule 2 to the DPA (the condition most often relied upon in support of disclosing personal data to the public). The case is likely to have far-reaching implications. For more detail, see Alistair Sloan’s blog.

Panopticon will, as ever, keep its eye on these and other related developments.

Robin Hopkins