Court case 2-03 O 356/20 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

It follows from the court decision that the applicant rents a property from the defendant company. Most probably (this does not result directly from the decision) there was a dispute between the parties concerning the tenancy contract (probably the tenancy rent) and the defendant wanted to distribute the applicant's personal data related to the tenancy contract by publicly displaying the contract. Due to the urgency of the case and the threat to the claimant's personal data, the claimant filed a demand with the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the defendant from making the contract public. Can a person affected by illegal data processing (outside the journalistic/editorial area) assert claims for data protection by way of a civil law injunction claim? The court found that a person affected by illegal data processing (outside the journalistic/editorial area) may pursue claims for data protection by means of a court injunction. Such claims are not blocked by Article 79 GDPR. Furthermore, the court considered that the lack of correspondence among the parties in the time between the letter of warning and the application in the preliminary injunction procedure does not lead to the rejection of the application, but only to the obligation of the court to examine it.