Germany Germany

Attorney

GDPR enforcement action by Data Protection Authority of Berlin on 2021.

Case details

Authority
Data Protection Authority of Berlin
Date
2021
Controller / Processor
Attorney
Sector
Finance, Insurance and Consulting
Quoted Articles
Art. 5 GDPR, Art. 6 GDPR
Type of violation
Insufficient legal basis for data processing

Summary

The DPA from Berlin has imposed a fine on an attorney. The attorney had been in dispute with a client for several years over a monetary claim. For two years, he published the first and last names, the residential addresses of the client and his family members, as well as various unredacted parts of files on his blog - and invoked the press privilege. However, this was not a purely exclusive journalistic publication. Rather, the attorney was concerned with accelerating the payment of the monetary amount to which he believed he was entitled. Since the attorney could therefore not refer to the press privilege as the legal basis for the data processing, the DPA found that he had unlawfully processed the data of the data subjects.

Open original source Links to the regulator's original publication or another source.

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