DSB – Court Ruling (Austria, 2022)

The data subject was a former employee of the controller. After having received an allegedly incomplete answer to his access request, the data subject lodged a complaint with the DSB (Austria). The DSG rejected to handle the complaint under Article 57(4) GDPR - considering it excessive - since there were at least 137 complaints of the data subject registered with the DSB. Moreover, these 137 cases were concerning only two subject matters. The first subject matter was that his son's citisenship was allegedly falsely recorded as Italian instead of German with the Austrian public authorities. The second subject matter was that the controller - his former employer - violated his data protection rights during the employment relationship. As the data subject was dissatisfied with the rejection but could not afford legal proceedings himself, he applied for legal aid (this means the exemption from court fees) with the BVwG in order to bring a legal action against the DPA's decision. The court rejected the application of the data subject because it found that the requirements for legal aid under national law were not met. One of the requirements is that the intended legal action may not appear futile. The court, however, concluded that a legal action against the DSB's decision appears futile, because the DSB rightfully rejected to handle the complaint under Article 57(4) GDPR. The court reasoned that the complaint was excessive, because the data subject had already lodged numerous complaints with the DSB about the same two subject matters (137) and the present complaint was closely linked to these complaints.