Court case 6 U 114/23 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2024)

The plaintiff sued a private health insurance company (the controller) by way of an action by stages (Stufenklage) according to [https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_zpo/englisch_zpo.html#p0945 § 254 German Civil Process Order (Zivilprozessordnung – ZPO)]. 57 clients of the controller had assigned claims to a third party (the plaintiff). The health insurance company had raised their insurance premiums. On the first stage, the claimant sued for information under Article 15 GDPR to be able to determine the premiums paid by the clients that had assigned their claims. On the second stage, the claimant sought a declaratory judgement that the raises of the insurance premiums by the controller were unlawful and were suing for an amount yet to be determined after having obtained the information from the first stage. The court of first instance, the Regional Court Wuppertal (Landgericht Wuppertal – LG Wuppertal) dismissed the lawsuit. = The court held that an action by stages was inadmissible because the claimant did not want to determine the exact amount of their claims but rather, if they had any claims at all. This made the claims brought forth on the second stage inadmissible because they were not specified enough under [https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_zpo/englisch_zpo.html#p0934 § 253(2)(2) ZPO]. The claims for information on the first stage were however admissible. The admissible claims for information were, however, unfounded. This was due to the fact that the criteria of neither Article 15 GDPR nor other, national legal bases for the claims were matched. = The court held that Article 15 GDPR did not give right to information for two reasons: first, the right under Article 15 GDPR to obtain access to personal data is strictly personal and does not follow the assigned claim (as an exception to [https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__401.html § 401 German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch – BGB)]). The court held that the right under Article 1