News

Upcoming: TikTok oral hearing on June 28th, 2023

The date for the oral hearing of phase 2 has been determined on Wednesday, June 28th. The second phase of the procedure has started with the statements by each of the plaintiffs on admissibility under WAMCA of the other plaintiffs, which was submitted on December 20th, 2022. On February 22nd, 2023, TikTok has submitted its statement on the admissibility of the three participating claim foundations.

TikTok has requested the foundations to disclose their respective agreements for claim financing. This has been opposed by the foundations TBYP and M&C. In contrast, SOMI has decided it will reveal our financing agreement to all parties involved as we are committed to transparency. The agreement will substantiate fully that we have no commercial motives in our collective claims.

Prior to the oral pleadings, the court has requested all foundations to submit information on how many participants they have signed on respectively, including to what and how they have signed on in principal.

Ultimately, it is expected in this phase that one of the three foundations that instituted the collective claim against TikTok in 2021 in the Netherlands will be selected as an Exclusive Representative. We will argue that this choice should be for SOMI. Following the oral hearing, the (interlocutory) judgment on this may be expected within a period of 2-6 months. Click here for more information on TikTok claim.

Facebook faced a largest GDPR fine €1,2 billion

On May 22nd, 2023, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) announced its binding dispute resolution decision of April 13th, Meta Platforms Ireland Limited was issued a 1,2 billion euro fine following an inquiry into its Facebook service, by the Irish Data Protection Authority.

This fine, which is the largest GDPR fine ever, was imposed for Meta's transfers of personal data to the US since July 16th, 2020. Furthermore, Meta has also been given six months to stop the unlawful processing, including storage, in the USA of personal data from EU citizens already transferred to the US.

According to the Guardian, this concerns a legal complaint brought by a privacy activist, Max Schrems, over concerns resulting from the Edward Snowden revelations that European users' data is not sufficiently protected from US intelligence agencies.

In response, Meta states that "This is not about one company's privacy practices, there is a fundamental conflict of law between the US government's rules on access to data and European privacy rights". Meta also indicates that they will appeal against this "unjustified and unnecessary fine".

A German court grant €500 for non-material GDPR damage

On May 25th, 2023, A German regional court of Lübeck (Landgericht Lübeck) granted €500 to the victim in an individual case against Facebook's 2021 data breach. It is a landmark case in term of compensation for non-material damages and that the court considered it was not necessary to assess the victim's psychological suffering since an actual violations of their (personality) rights occurred.