juris GmbH – CJEU Judgment (Germany, 2024)

The data subject was a client of juris, a company operating a legal database (“controller”). On 6 November 2018, the data subject learnt that his personal data was being used by the controller for the purposes of direct marketing. The data subject therefore revoked his consent to receive information by the company by email or by telephone, and objected to the processing of those data, except for the newsletter which he wished to continue to receive. On January 2019, he received advertising leaflets to his business address. These leaflets contained a “trial personal code” which gave access to an order form for the controller’s products and included information relating to the data subject. This was confirmed by notary at the data subject’s request. In April 2019, the data subject informed the controller that the creation of those prospectuses constituted unlawful processing. He therefore requested compensation for the damage he suffered, under Article 82 GDPR. In May 2019, he received a new advertising leaflet and reiterated his objection by bailiff. The data subject sued the controller before the Landgericht Saarbrücken (Regional Court, Saarbrücken) requesting compensation for his material damage, relating to the costs of the bailiff and notary costs incurred by the data subject, as well as his non material damage. The controller argued that it has established a system for managing objections to marketing and that the late taking into account of the data subject’s objections was either (i) due to the fact that one of its employees had not complied with the instructions given or (ii) it would have been excessively onerous to take the objections into account. The Regional Court stayed the proceedings and referred four questions to the CJEU. The third and fourth questions were combined: # Is the infringement of the provisions of the GDPR which confer rights on the data subject sufficient to constitute non-material damage within the meaning of Article 82(1) GDPR? # Ca