Court case 4 U 1905/21 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2022)

The controller is a private health insurance company. The data subject is a customer of the controller. The parties are in dispute about the validity of several increases to the insurance premiums. The data subject filed a lawsuit with the Regional Court of Leipzig (Landgericht Leipzig - LG Leipzig) requesting the refund of overpaid premiums as well as information on all adjustments to the premiums in the form of notification letters sent to the data subject and supplements to the insurance policy. The controller rejected both claims. The Regional Court of Leipzig dismissed the data subject's claim almost entirely. As a consequence, the data subject appealed this decision to the Higher Regional Court of Dresden (Oberlandesgericht Dresden - OLG Dresden). The Higher Regional Court of Dresden dismissed the plaintiffs appeal. The court found that the right to access cannot be used to obtain information about premium increases. For its reasoning the court exclusively quoted a decision of the Higher Regional Court of Hamm (Oberlandesgericht Hamm - OLG Hamm) from the 15th November 2021 (case nr. 20 U 269/21). In the quoted decision, the OLG Hamm held that a controller is allowed to reject a request to access under Article 12(5)(b) GDPR as "excessive" if the request's sole purpose is to verify the validity of premium increases instead of verifying the lawfulness of the processing of personal data. In its reasoning the OLG Hamm found that the term "in particular" in Article 12(5)(b) GDPR shows that there can also be other circumstances than the repetitiveness of a request which can render a request "excessive". The court further referred to Recital 63 and established that the purpose of the right to access is to be aware of, and verify, the lawfulness of the processing of personal data. Therefore, the Court considered a request whose sole purpose is to verify the validity of premium increases instead of verifying the lawfulness of the processing of personal data excessive