In June last year I wrote about an unsuccessful strike-out application by the defendant in the High Court in proceedings arising from a very unfortunate incident, whereby Lambeth Council had imperfectly redacted highly sensitive data when responding to a subject access request.
The requester was the father (“AM”) of a child about whom a referral had been made to Lambeth social services, and the person whose identity was inadvertently revealed (when AM disapplied redactions made using Adobe software) was the person who made the referral – “HJ” – who happened to be AM’s sister.
The substantive proceedings have now come to trial, with a judgment now published (London Borough of Lambeth v AM (Judgment No. 2) [2021] EWHC 186 (QB)). Unsurprisingly, the judge held that AM acted in breach of confidence by removing the redactions, by retaining a copy of the information and refusing to return or destroy it, and by using the information to write a letter before action accusing HJ of malicious defamation, breach of confidence and harassment.
There were no further allusions to an apparent criminal prosecution of AM by the Information Commissioner’s Office. One waits to see if further news about that emerges.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
informationrightsandwrongs 