Today the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Wm Morrisons Supermarkets Plc v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 12, bringing to its conclusion a case which had the potential to alter significantly the data protection and cyber security litigation and class action landscape. The headline news is that Morrisons has been found not to be … Read more
Given the COVID-19 crisis, it is likely that data protection may no longer at the forefront of every controller’s mind, and rather, that business continuity has taken precedence. Acknowledging this shift and the need for companies to divert business as usual resources to their response to the crisis, the ICO has published two articles on … Read more
The Advocate General (“AG“) of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“ECJ“) has recommended that the Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCCs“) should remain a valid mechanism to legitimise the transfer of personal data to third countries. However: Read more
The ICO has published a notice of its intent to fine British Airways £183.39 million for its 2018 data breach where the personal data of 500,000 customers was stolen by hackers; This is the first ‘mega fine’ issued by a European data regulator since the implementation of the GDPR; The ICO acted as lead supervisory … Read more
The GDPR came into effect almost a year ago on the 25 May 2018. As the most significant reform of data protection law in Europe for over 20 years, the legislation raised expectations of a cultural shift in attitude to data privacy. A year on from the fanfare of implementation, this bulletin looks at key … Read more
On 15 April 2019, the Supreme Court granted supermarket chain Morrisons permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal ruling that it was vicariously liable for its employee’s misuse of data in the first successful UK class action for a data breach. Permission was granted on all grounds of appeal and the Supreme Court will … Read more
The German competition authority, the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO“) last week announced the results of its investigation into Facebook for a novel abuse of dominance involving consent for its data collection. Whilst the full decision is not yet public, the FCO has published a background paper here. In short, the FCO found that Facebook had … Read more
The Court of Appeal has today dismissed an appeal against the High Court’s decision that Morrisons was vicariously liable for its employee’s misuse of data, despite: (i) Morrisons having done as much as it reasonably could to prevent the misuse; and (ii) the employee’s intention being to cause reputational or financial damage to Morrisons itself: … Read more
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) ruling in Barbulescu v Romania (61496/08) is a timely reminder of the limits of employers’ ability to monitor their employees’ private activity on work IT systems. The case concerned an employee’s personal use of a Yahoo Messenger account set up at the employer’s request … Read more
