A woman, who claimed a pharmacy allowed her husband to watch CCTV footage of her buying a pregnancy test kit, has allegedly settled a Circuit Court damages claim against the pharmacy for €10,000. The action claimed a breach of section 7 of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 for breach of duty of care, in allowing the footage to be shown to her husband.
She told the court that she had bought the pregnancy test for a friend, but her husband found the receipt in their home and went to the pharmacy with it. When he arrived at the pharmacy he pretended to be very distressed and “tricked” one of the employees into showing him CCTV coverage of the actual purchase, and took a picture of it.
In order for a data subject to be awarded compensation for breach of his or her data protection rights, it must be shown that the data subject suffered loss or damage arising from the breach. This was demonstrated in the case of Collins v FBD Insurance [2013] IEHC 137, where the High Courtset aside an award of compensation made by the Circuit Court to a data subject for breach of his data protection rights, on the grounds that no loss or damage resulted from the breach.
Click here to view my blog on the Collins case.