“What constitutes ‘damage’ for data protection purposes? This question came before the Supreme Court in Lloyd v Google LLC [2021] UKSC 50. The claimant, Mr. Lloyd, sought permission to serve proceedings on Google outside the jurisdiction, alleging breach of Google’s duties as a data controller under section 4(4) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (‘DPA 1998’). The claim alleged that for several months between late 2011 and early 2012, Google used Apple’s ‘Safari’ Internet browser to track secretly the Internet activity of millions of Apple iPhone users (in what is known as ‘the Safari workaround’) before collating and selling the data. The Safari workaround has already been the subject of litigation (see Vidal-Hall and others v Google Inc [2015] EWCA Civ 311), but a novel feature of Lloyd was that the claimant did not seek damages just for his own loss but instead claimed to represent – and recover damages for – everyone resident in England and Wales who owned an iPhone at the relevant time and whose data were obtained by Google without their consent. The size of class was estimated to be 4.4 million people …” (more)
€
Judith Skillen, ‘Damage in the Supreme Court’, Cambridge Law Journal, volume 81, issue 1, March 2022, pp 14-17, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008197322000083. Published online by Cambridge University Press 30 May.
First posted 2022-06-01 10:00:39
Leave a Reply