CJEU case C-687/21 Saturn Electro – CJEU Judgment (Germany, 2021)

The case concerns a customer of Saturn whose appliance and purchase documents, while in the shop, were mistakenly given to another customer. The first customer seeks compensation for this error. The District Court of Hagen referred the following questions to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling: 1. As no automatic legal effects are specified, is the compensation rule enacted in Article 82 GDPR invalid in the case of non-material damage? 2. Is it necessary, for the purposes of the right to compensation, to establish the occurrence of non-material damage, to be demonstrated by the claimant, in addition to the unauthorised disclosure of the protected data to an unauthorised third party? 3. Does the accidental disclosure of the personal data of the data subject (name, address, occupation, income, employer) to a third party in a paper document (printout), as the result of a mistake by employees of the processing undertaking, suffice in order to establish infringement of the GDPR? 4. Where the undertaking accidentally discloses, through its employees, data entered in an automated data processing system to an unauthorised third party in the form of a printout, does that accidental disclosure to a third party qualify as unlawful further processing (Article 2(1), Article 5(1)(f), Article 6(1) and Article 24 GDPR)? 5. Is non-material damage within the meaning of Article 82 GDPR incurred even where the third party who received the document containing the personal data did not read the data before returning the document containing the information, or does the discomfort of the person whose personal data were unlawfully disclosed suffice for the purpose of establishing non-material damage within the meaning of Article 82 GDPR, given that every unauthorised disclosure of personal data entails the risk, which cannot be eliminated, that the data might nevertheless have been passed on to any number of people or even misused? 6. Where accidental disclosure to third parties is preventabl