Non-mate­ri­al dama­ges under the GDPR – Judgments from Germany

Like col­le­ague Simon Assi­on from Bird & Bird at Lin­ke­dIn reports, the­re have appar­ent­ly been four court decis­i­ons in Ger­ma­ny to date con­cer­ning claims for non-mate­ri­al dama­ges. In all cases, the cor­re­spon­ding lawsuits fai­led. In sum­ma­ry, the courts held that

• a cla­im for non-mate­ri­al dama­ges at least a “noti­ceable” impair­ment is requi­red; mere harass­ment is not suf­fi­ci­ent (AG Dietz, Novem­ber 7, 2018 – 8 C 130/18);
• the Rejec­tion of a cre­dit appli­ca­ti­on due to inac­cu­ra­te cre­dit­wort­hi­ness data no cla­im for dama­ges trig­gers becau­se the­re is no entit­le­ment to a loan, but that the unlawful dis­clo­sure of per­so­nal data may cau­se rele­vant dama­ge (LG Karls­ru­he, August 2, 2019 – 8 O 26/19);
• a cla­im for dama­ges is a not only insi­gni­fi­cant impair­ment but that it may be pos­si­ble to devia­te from this if the inf­rin­ge­ment is inten­tio­nal and pro­fit-ori­en­ted and affects a lar­ge num­ber of peo­p­le (OLG Dres­den, June 11, 2019 – 4 U 760/19);
• not every data secu­ri­ty breach leads to a cla­im for com­pen­sa­ti­onbut the per­son con­cer­ned has to pro­ve the mate­ri­al or imma­te­ri­al dama­ge (AG Bochum, March 11, 2019 – 65 C 485/18).