Court case W101 2218962-2 – Court Ruling (Austria, 2023)

This case originally concerned a complaint filed by a (soon-to-be-ex) husband, the data subject, against his (soon-to-be-ex) wife. During divorce proceedings the wife had commissioned an expert to calculate the amount of maintenance she would be due. This was determined on the basis of the data subject’s personal information – including income, property value, and the economic figures of a private foundation of which both parties were beneficiaries – which the claim alleges had been obtained unlawfully. For clarification, it is important to note from the outset that, in this case, the controller is the expert who was commissioned by the wife, and the wife is a third party within the meaning of Article 4(10) GDPR. Initially the complaint was filed with the DPA, which stated that it could not be established how the wife had obtained the relevant data. Furthermore, the authority found that while in principle the information was personal data worthy of protection, the existence of overriding legitimate interests on the part of the complainant’s wife made the processing lawful (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). It was also pointed out that the wife, as a beneficiary of the private foundation, had a right to information in accordance with § 30(1) of the Austrian Private Foundation Act. This decision was appealed to the Federal Administrative Court, the data subject argued that an economic interest in accessing the information – whether it be the wife’s legitimate interest or the expert’s interest in fulfilling a contract – should never outweigh his constitutionally protected fundamental right to data protection. Also, according to the established case law of the civil courts, a private expert opinion is merely a private document which exclusively reflects the opinion of its author and is not suitable evidence in divorce proceedings. The Federal Administrative Court upheld the appeal and found that the controller, as the responsible party, had unlawfully processed the data in violati