Court case ROT 20/3286 – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2021)

The plaintiff made a request for the erasure of her medical data from her file in 2014 and another request in 2017. Both were denied by the defendant. In 2018 however, the defendant revoked this decision and deleted the data. The plaintiff claimed to be entitled to compensation for immaterial and material damages of at least €25,000 based on the GDPR. The Court held that the plaintiff is entitled to compensation for immaterial damages because the defendant breached the right to respect for private and family life of the plaintiff by storing and processing the data. The Court deemed such a breach a harm in person as stated in Article 6:106 (1)(b) Dutch Civil Code which is a legal ground for compensation of immaterial damages. To determine the compensation sum, the Court took into account that the records were stored for about ten years and that the plaintiff had made several request for erasure of the data. The Court found it sufficiently plausible that during these ten years, several people and authorities could have taken note of the data without being entitled to do so. Therefore, the plaintiff suffered immaterial damages. Considering in another Dutch case (ECLI:NL:RVS:2020:898), a sum of 500 euros was granted for unlawful processing of data for a short period of time, the Court held that a sum of €2500 euros should be granted to the plaintiff. The Court held that the plaintiff was not harmed in her career or suffered a loss of income due to the processing of the records. Therefore, the Court rejected the plaintiff's request for compensation of material damages.