Court case 13 U 84/19 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2022)

Court Ruling
DPA LGHannover20 January 2022Germany
final
Court Ruling

General GDPR enforcement action

This case relates to broader data protection obligations, not specifically to cookie or consent banner compliance. It is not included in cookie statistics or the Risk Calculator.

A German court ruled that a social media platform wrongly restricted a user's account and deleted their comments. The court found that the user did not actually violate the platform's rules. This case shows that platforms must carefully review their actions against users to avoid wrongful penalties.

What happened

A court found that a social media platform wrongly deleted a user's comments and restricted their account.

Who was affected

The user of the social media platform whose comments were deleted and account restricted.

What the authority found

The court ruled that the user did not violate the platform's terms and conditions, making the platform's actions unjustified.

Why this matters

This ruling underscores the importance for social media platforms to ensure their enforcement actions are accurate and justified. It highlights the potential for legal challenges if platforms act without clear evidence of rule violations.

GDPR Articles Cited

Art. 16 GDPR
Art. 82(2) GDPR
Decision AuthorityOLG Celle
Reviewed AuthorityLG Hannover
Full Legal Summary
Detailed

The data subject is a user of the social media platform F (controller). The controller was of the opinion that two comments posted by the data subject violated the terms and conditions ("F's Community Standards"). As a consequence, the controller deleted the two comments and restricted the abilities of the data subject's profile temporarily. It also made a note of haven taken these measures against the data subject in case of future violations. The data subject filed a law suit against the controller. In this law suit the data subject requested, among others: 1. that the controller will be ordered to restore the two comments, 2. that the measures of the controller will be declared illegal, 3. that injunctive relief will be granted, 4. that the controller will be ordered to rectify the data so that the existence of a breach of the terms is deleted from the record and the counter recording the number of breaches is reset and 5. that damages will be awarded. The Regional Court Hannover dismissed the claim of the data subject entirely. The data subject appealed this decision. The appellate court - the Higher Regional Court Celle (Oberlandesgericht Celle - OLG Celle) - amended the judgement and granted the requests 1-3, but still denied the requests for rectification (4) and damages (5). After establishing that the data subject did not violate the terms and conditions, the court focused primarily on the application for rectification. The court concluded that the note of the controller about the deletion of the comments and the restriction of the account is not "inaccurate" data according to Article 16 GDPR, because the deletion and restriction of the account have indeed taken place. Furthermore, the court found that there is no indication that the controller actually stores a note in which it deems its measures to "have been proven lawful"[explicitly phrased this way by the court - see Comments on this]. The court further reasoned that even if the controller would ha

Outcome

Court Ruling

A ruling by a national court on a data-protection matter.

Related Cases (0)

No other cases found for Court case 13 U 84/19 in DE

This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.

Details

Ruling Date

20 January 2022

Authority

DPA LGHannover

About this data

Data: GDPRhub (noyb.eu)
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Cite as: Cookie Fines. Court case 13 U 84/19 - Germany (2022). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu

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