Court case 8 AZR 117/24 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2025)

The data subject is a renowned lawyer specialised in employment law and the controller a university operating as a corporation under public law. In 2020, the data subject was sentenced for fraud by a court of first instance (Regional Court of Munich I). In 2022 the Federal Court of Justice overturned this judgment. In June 2021, the controller advertised a temporary position for a lawyer, to which the data subject applied for, enclosing all relevant documents, and then went through the interview process. In July 2021, the data subject received a rejection notice from the controller, stating that it can be seen from publicly available online sources that the data subject had been sentenced for fraud by the court of first instance. Even though the judgement is not yet legally binding, he could only be hired under the resolutory condition of a clean criminal record. He was also informed that another candidate, who matched the requirements better, had been selected. In December 2022, the data subject filed a case with the Court of First Instance (Düsseldorf Labor Court -ArbG Düsseldorf) claiming, amongst other things, that he is entitled to material and immaterial damages due to the unlawful collection of his personal data. The core of the allegations is that that the controller collected the data from the internet without him being aware, the collected data was incorrect and since the controller did not inform him about the processing he was not given the opportunity to comment which had an influence to the outcome of the selection process. The controller claimed that the position had been filled with another applicant who demonstrated better professional competence in comparison to the data subject. The knowledge of the criminal proceedings against the data subject and their evaluation in relation to the position were additional reasons for the rejection. The data subject is not entitled to damages under Article 82(1) GDPR, because the personal data collection d