Court case 2 AZR 235/21 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2021)

The data subject is an employee of the controller. The controller terminated the employment contract because of allegations against the data subject which had been made in a specially set up platform of the controller to uncover mismanagement within its business. The data subject filed a lawsuit against the termination of the contract in which he, among the others, requested access to his data under Article 15 GDPR. The data subject won the lawsuit with regard to the termination of the contract. The part relating to Article 15 GDPR was separated from the rest of the lawsuit. The data subject limited its application under Article 15(1), (3) GDPR to data on his "personal performance and conduct" which is "not stored in his personal file". The Regional Labor Court Baden-Württemberg (Landesarbeitsgericht Baden-Württemberg - LAG Baden-Württemberg) upheld the claim. The Federal Labor Court decided that the claim was inadmissible according to § 253(2)(Nr. 2) ZPO (Code of Civil Procedure) since the request to access was not specific enough. The court affirmed that a claim must be so specific that it can be enforced later on, otherwise uncertainty would be created for the defendant and the enforcement authorities. The court further reasoned that the use of terms which are subject to interpretation is only allowed if, on the one hand, further specification is not possible or reasonable for the plaintiff, and, on the other hand, there is no doubt for the parties as to their meaning, so that the scope of the application and the judgment is certain. The court found that it was possible for the data subject to specify its request because his submissions showed that he actually knew which data he wanted access to. Furthermore, it found that "personal performance and conduct" and "not stored in his personnel file" are not sufficient specific terms as they are not defined by law or jurisprudence and don't have a definite common meaning.