Court case III C 904/23 – Court Ruling (Poland, 2026)

The Financial Ombudsman’s office (the controller) sent a letter containing the name, the address, and the case reference number of a customer (the data subject) to 28,366 public institutions and entities registered on an official government platform in February 2021. The data subject demanded compensation for the unauthorised disclosure of his personal data from the controller in November 2021. The controller refused to accept liability for the incident. The supervisory authority issued the controller a reprimand in September 2022 for disclosure of personal data in violation of Article 6(1) GDPR. The data subject brought a lawsuit for damages under Article 82 GDPR before the Regional Court in Warsaw in August 2023. The data subject stated that they had experienced severe stress and lost the sense of security and control over their data as a result of the unauthorised disclosure of the letter. The controller argued it was not at fault for the incident as it was caused by a temporary IT system failure that the controller could not have foreseen. The Regional Court in Warsaw held that the controller was undoubtedly liable for the unauthorised disclosure of the data subject’s personal data pursuant to Article 82 GDPR: the controller was an administrator for the government platform and had not taken adequate measures to secure the data. Second, the court held that the data subject had suffered non-material damage in connection with the aforementioned incident. It took into account that the data had been disclosed to numerous entities. In addition, the deterioration of the data subject’s mental state was confirmed by a witness. The court awarded the data subject PLN 40,000 in damages. It considered the data subject’s claim of PLN 50,000 to be excessive in light of established case law.