Canary Island Cars, S.L. – Court Ruling (Spain, 2021)

In the appealed AEPD's decision, [https://www.aepd.es/es/documento/ps-00385-2018.pdf PS/00385/2018], two customers had the same name, what caused a failure when verifying customer details, what caused Canary Islands Cars, a rental car company, to incorrectly use the information of customer A to create a car rental contract for customer B, who then committed a traffic offence. Subsequently, the details of customer A were incorrectly passed on to the Directorate General for Traffic (DGT). Once the DGT contacted the complainant, she/he realised that the contract that Canary Island Cars provided to the DGT for the purposes of issuing the fine was dissimilar to the one she/he had initially signed. Based on the mismatch of information, the complainant appealed the fine upon receiving it. The AEPD noted the following in decision [https://www.aepd.es/es/documento/ps-00385-2018.pdf PS/00385/2018]: "Knowing that there may be different names and surnames, the defendant has elements to verify identity by the national ID number (DNI), number that matches that of the driving licence, customer number or printing of the copy of the contract, among others. Although these verifications are normally carried out by the employees, it should be noted that in this case they were not carried out. If any of the three elements had been verified, the defect could have been detected in its origin. In other words, the identification document must be required at the right time to make the procedure effective”. The car rental company decided to appeal the case before the Spanish National High Court (Audiencia Nacional). In their appeal to this resolution, Canary Islands Cars argued that the accuracy principle had not been breached because the associated name was correct. The car rental company alleged that this was a human error and a fortuitous event. It also argued that the sanction imposed was disproportionate. Was the resolution of the AEPD decided in error? Should the appeal of Canary Island Cars be granted? When analysing the appellant's arguments, the National High Court (Audiencia Nacional) noted that "The mere coincidence of name and surname does not justify the creating of the car rental contract with the data of another person... especially when you have the person in front, to whom the car is handed over and several people or phases intervene: preparation of the contract, data collection and delivery-verification of the vehicle, delivery of a copy of the contract, payment, procedures in all of which must verify the identity of the contracting party and in this case no diligence is accredited". The National High Court dismissed the appeal and declared that the resolution was in accordance with the law with express imposition of the payment of the procedural costs to the appellant.