Meta Loses German Court Fight Over Global Data Leak In 2021
Overturning a lower court ruling won by Meta, the judges also said in situations involving a mere loss of control of the data, compensation is likely to be about €100 ($106). A Cologne court must now retry the suit observing these guidelines.
(Source: Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) --Meta Platforms Inc. risks being on the hook for compensation claims from thousands of German users after it lost a top court ruling over the 2021 global leak of half a billion people’s private data.
In a groundbreaking ruling, the Federal Court of Justice, Germany’s highest tribunal in civil matters, eased the standard of proof for Facebook users seeking compensation for the data theft. It’s enough to show they were victims of the leak, they don’t have to additionally prove they suffered in a particular way, the court said in a statement on Monday’s judgment.
Overturning a lower court ruling won by Meta, the judges also said in situations involving a mere loss of control of the data, compensation is likely to be about €100 ($106). A Cologne court must now retry the suit observing these guidelines.
The German litigation is linked to the massive 2021 data leak, when personal information on 533 million Facebook users — including phone numbers and email addresses — emerged on a hacker website. Two years ago, the Irish Data Protection Commission, the main privacy watchdog for Meta in the European Union, slapped the company with a €265 million fine after it failed to apply adequate safeguards.
Meta said the top court judgment isn’t in line with the case law of the EU’s Court of Justice, the 27-nation bloc’s highest tribunal. The company said it’s is confident it will again prevail in the lower court as Facebook’s systems weren’t hacked and there was no data breach.
Monday’s judgment will guide thousands of cases pending in the country. Previously, Meta had won 6.000 rulings in the litigation, lawyers for the company said in October, claiming the number indicates a success rate of 85%. The lawyers didn’t say whether that also includes cases Meta had settled.
The data was scraped in 2018 and 2019 by entering randomized phone numbers via the contact-import function.
The case is: BGH, VI ZR 10/24.
