Court case 15 U 126/19 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2019)

The plaintiff is a dental specialist and demanded that the defendant, which operates a rating portal for doctors with more than six million users per month, delete his data published on this portal without his consent. The Court of First Instance found that the plaintiff could request the deletion of his personal data pursuant to Article 17(1)(d) GDPR since the data was unlawfully processed. The defendant claimed that its activities fall under exception in (Article 85 GDPR) read in conjunction with Recital 153 and the right to freedom of expression and information as it carries out processing activities for journalistic purposes. Is a platform that grants certain benefits to "premium" listings a journalistic platform? The Higher Regional Court focused in particular on whether the evaluation site was a “neutral information broker” by granting customers “hidden advantages” - terms developed through the case law of the Federal Supreme Court to assess whether the exception in Article 17(3) GDPR applies. The court examined the various functions of the site on a case by case basis and found that the site left the role as a “neutral information broker” through four of the contested functions. The controller can therefore not be seen as a journalistic platform. The doctors were therefore given the right to erasure under Article 17 GDPR. The Court admitted the appeal (“Revision”) to the Federal Supreme Court. → See the parallel case OLG Cologne - 15 U 89/19.