The claimant Walter Tzvi Soriano and the defendants, including Forensic News LLC – Court Ruling (United Kingdom, 2021)
General GDPR enforcement action
This case relates to broader data protection obligations, not specifically to cookie or consent banner compliance. It is not included in cookie statistics or the Risk Calculator.
The High Court in the UK ruled on a case involving Forensic News LLC, which was accused of breaching privacy laws over articles about a claimant's alleged ties to an intelligence company. The court decided that GDPR did not apply because the news website did not have a presence in the UK. This case clarifies the limits of GDPR's reach for companies based outside the EU.
What happened
The court found that Forensic News LLC did not meet the criteria for GDPR's application due to lack of establishment in the UK.
Who was affected
The claimant, Walter Tzvi Soriano, who alleged that the articles harmed his reputation.
What the authority found
The court held that GDPR did not apply to Forensic News LLC because it lacked a stable arrangement in the UK.
Why this matters
This ruling sets a precedent for how GDPR applies to foreign companies. It reminds website operators that having a presence in the EU is crucial for GDPR compliance.
GDPR Articles Cited
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The High Court of England and Wales examined a claim against the news website Forensic News LLC and several journalists contributing to its articles. Both the news website and the journalists are based in the US. The claim concerned different news articles containing allegations on the claimant’s connection with an Israeli intelligence company, which the claimant asserted represented a breach of the GDPR and several other laws. As preliminary point of law, the court considered the question whether GDPR is applicable to the situation at hand. Concretely, the court examined whether the matter could fall under any of the three criteria for the extraterritorial application of the GDPR, as prescribed by Articles 3(1), 3(2) and 79(2) of the GDPR. The criteria considered were – whether Forensic News LLC had an establishment in the EU, whether it offered goods and services to individuals in the EU, and whether it monitored the behavior of individuals in the EU. On the first point, the court found that Forensic News LLC did not have any stable arrangements in the UK, and the “establishment” criteria was therefore not met. For this conclusion, it was decisive that the news website had no employees or representatives in the UK. On the other hand, the fact that Forensic News LLC had a readership in the UK and a “handful” of UK subscriptions was not sufficient to prove establishment. On the second point, the court’s position was that Forensic News LLC did not directly target UK consumers with its goods and services. The fact that the UK is a shipping destination for the website’s merchandise was disregarded due to lack of actual purchases – the court found that, in the UK, only one baseball cap was purchased from the website. Finally, on the third point, the court considered that the monitoring undertaken by Forensic News LLC was not sufficient to justify extraterritorial application of the GDPR. Namely, the news website used cookies for the purpose of behavioral profili
Outcome
Court Ruling
A ruling by a national court on a data-protection matter.
Related Cases (0)
No other cases found for The claimant Walter Tzvi Soriano and the defendants, including Forensic News LLC in UK
This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.
Details
About this data
Cite as: Cookie Fines. The claimant Walter Tzvi Soriano and the defendants, including Forensic News LLC - United Kingdom (2021). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu
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