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Camera di Commercio Lecce (Lecce Chamber of Commerce) – CJEU Judgment (Italy, 2017)
CJEU precedent (Directive 95/46/EC, pre-GDPR)
This is a Court of Justice judgment predating the GDPR. It interprets Directive 95/46/EC (the Data Protection Directive). It is not a cookie or ePrivacy case and is excluded from cookie statistics and the Risk Calculator.
The Court of Justice ruled on a case involving Salvatore Manni, who argued that his poor sales results were due to being listed as the director of a bankrupt company. The court's decision will help clarify how long companies must keep certain information on public registers, which is important for business owners managing their reputations.
What happened
Salvatore Manni challenged the Lecce Chamber of Commerce for not removing his name from a public register linking him to a bankrupt company.
Who was affected
Salvatore Manni, a businessman whose reputation was affected by the public listing of his previous company.
What the authority found
The court highlighted the need to balance the obligation to keep public registers with the right to remove unnecessary data.
Why this matters
This ruling emphasizes that companies must consider the relevance of information they keep on public records. Business owners should be aware of how their public listings can impact their reputation.
Source checks
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Processing notes: articles corrected, national law identified, authority corrected.
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Article 2188 of the Italian civil code states that companies must be on a publicly available register. Salvatore Manni was the sole director of a building company, Italiana Costruzioni Srl, which was awarded a contract for the construction of a large building complex. Mr Manni however experienced difficulties selling the units of this building complex. In this context, Manni brought proceedings against the Chamber of Commerce of Lecce, claiming that those poor sale results were due to the fact that he was still presented, in the official company register of the Chamber of Commerce, as the sole director of another company ('Immobiliare Salentina’) which had been declare bankrupt and struck off the register of companies a few years ago. Manni also claimed that a credit scoring company had used these data from the register to give him a negative rating. Mr Manni requested the Lecce Chamber of Commerce in charge of the register to erase, anonymise or block the data linking him to Immobiliare Salentina. He also asked for damages as compensation for the reputational harm he had suffered. The Court of Lecce initially upheld his claim, and ordered the Chamber of Commerce to anonymise his data and to give him 2000 EUR in damages. The Chamber of Commerce appealed this decision to the Court of Cassation. In this context, the Court of Cassation referred the following questions to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling: * Does the obligation to remove data no longer necessary for the purpose stated under Article 6(1)(e) take precedence over the Italian law obligation to include details on the register? * Is there a derogation to the principle under Article 3 Directive 68/151 that there should be no time limit to data published in the companies registered? The Court highlighted that under Article 2(1)(d) Directive 68/151, Member States must make the disclosure by companies of appointments, termination of office, legal proceedings, entering into administration etc... compulsory. A
Outcome
CJEU Case
A judgment or Advocate General opinion in a case before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Related Cases (0)
No other cases found for Camera di Commercio Lecce (Lecce Chamber of Commerce) in IT
This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.
Details
Judgment Date
9 March 2017
Authority
Court of Justice of the European Union
About this data
Cite as: Cookie Fines. Camera di Commercio Lecce (Lecce Chamber of Commerce) - Italy (2017). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu
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