Court case 440376 – Court Ruling (France, 2021)

DataJust is an AI-based technology aiming at evaluating compensation harmonisation in the judicial system as well as establishing indicative references for compensation. It thus collects several type of information on case-law regarding compensation between January 1st 2017 and 31st December 2019. Data collected and processed includes name of individuals, except the parties, identifying elements, information on damages, and personal information on professional and financial situation. Right to opposition does not apply as stated in Article 6 of the decree. In order to set up the system, the government adopted a decree on March 27 2020 laying out DataJust functioning. Several complainants, including NGOs, challenged the legality of DataJust on several grounds including lawfulness of processing, unauthorized use of sensitive data, violation of the data minimisation principle as well as inadmissible restriction of data subjects' rights. The CE approved DataJust decree on several grounds. First, the decree explains explicitly the legitimate interest to process the data as required in Article 4 of the loi du 6 janvier 1978. Ends of the data processing are fully vindicated and legitimate as it is only on a short period of time (2 years), it has an all-encompassing approach (both amicably and judicial dispute resolutions are taken into account) and it facilitates access to case-law. Complainants also put forward that DataJust was using data collected for other purposes which would be incompatible with Article 5(1)(b) GDPR and Article 6(4) GDPR. The CE dismissed that claimed by recalling that both DataJust and first data collection involve dispute settlement purposes. Second, for what concerns the use of health data and other very sensitive data, the CE pointed out that the processing is based on Article 9(2)(g) GDPR and Article 6 of the loi du 6 janvier 1978 and that there was a substantial public interest in simplifying access to jurisprudence through an algorithm. T