Court case 24797/2024 – Court Ruling (Italy, 2024)

The case is part of a broader dispute between a company and some of its employees. During a meeting between the managers of the company and the employees, one of the employees (the controller) recorded the ongoing conversation, without the managers being aware of this. Some years later, another employee used this recording during a labour trial as evidence. Therefore, the managers (the data subjects in this case) filed a complaint with the Italian DPA (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali). The DPA rejected this complaint, arguing that the processing at hand had the only purpose of proving the employee's statements during the trial. The data subjects appealed the DPA's decision before the Court of Venice (Tribunale di Venezia). Contrary to the DPA, the court upheld the data subjects' claims, ruling that the processing was unlawful and fining the controller €5,000. The court gave the following reasons: # when the recording was made, there was no defence needs but only some "organisational problems" in the company; # the trial in which the recording was used took place years later; # the household exemption provided for by Article 2(2)(c) GDPR does not apply. The controller appealed this decision before the Italian Supreme Court (Corte di cassazione). First, the court pointed out that the recording occurred in 2016, i.e. a time when the GDPR was not yet in force. The court recalled that A[https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:decreto.legislativo:2003-06-30;196!vig=2016-11-14~art24 rticle 24(f) of the then-applicable Italian Data Protection Code] stated that the data subject's consent was not needed when the processing was necessary "to assert or defend a legal claim, provided that the data are processed exclusively for such purposes and for no longer than is necessary for the pursuit of those purposes". On this point, the court noted that, according to national case law, this rule applies not only during the trial on itself, but also regarding