The Court of Appeal has dismissed Peter Nowak’s appeal over his request for memoranda prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in response to a complaint he made about two audits. It held that the memoranda did not constitute his personal data under the Data Protection Acts or the EU directive then in force.
Nowak, a former trainee accountant at PwC, complained to the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board (CARB) in 2011, alleging failures to comply with accounting and auditing standards in two audits. PwC sent CARB memoranda addressing the complaints. CARB decided the complaints did not merit further investigation.
Nowak later sought access to the memoranda under data protection law. PwC provided other records but refused to provide them, saying they were not his personal data. The Data Protection Commissioner investigated and an Assistant Commissioner inspected the material. The Commissioner refused the request. The Circuit Court upheld that decision, and the High Court dismissed Nowak’s appeal on a point of law.
In the Court of Appeal, Nowak argued that the memoranda related to him because they were generated by his complaint and concerned audits on which he had worked. He also relied on the accompanying letter, which named him, and argued that the memoranda should have been on his personnel file. The Commissioner and PwC submitted that the documents concerned PwC’s compliance with professional standards, did not assess Nowak’s work and had no effect on him.
The Court of Appeal accepted that, read together with the cover letter retained by PwC, the memoranda could identify Nowak. But identification alone was not enough: the documents also had to “relate to” him. The court found that the established facts were that the memoranda did not refer to him, including his work on the audits, and there was no evidence that they assessed his work or affected his rights or interests. Their content and purpose concerned PwC’s response to the complaints about its accounting standards.
The court said that treating the memoranda as Nowak’s personal data solely because his complaint prompted them would stretch the concept beyond its purpose. It concluded there was no error of law in the High Court’s decision and dismissed the appeal.
On the Commissioner’s cross-appeal, the court overturned the High Court’s decision not to award costs for the Circuit Court and High Court appeals. It ordered Nowak to pay the Commissioner’s costs in those proceedings, when taxed and ascertained. For the Court of Appeal proceedings, the court said the Commissioner should recover its costs, also when taxed and ascertained, subject to any submissions Nowak wished to make within 14 days of the judgment.