The High Court has rejected Geraldine Scanlan’s application to have a dispute with Grant Thornton heard first by the Data Protection Commissioner, while ordering substantial deletions from her revised defence and counterclaim.
In a judgment delivered on 2 June 2020, Ms Justice Pilkington said the plaintiffs’ claim for permanent injunctions was a private law matter within the High Court’s jurisdiction. The plaintiffs seek orders preventing Ms Scanlan from disseminating or using specified confidential information and requiring its return. They have abandoned their claim for damages.
The dispute arose after Grant Thornton supplied Ms Scanlan with a CD in response to a data access request. The information included data relating to third parties and Grant Thornton’s confidential proprietary information. The plaintiffs say the material was disclosed in error. The judgment records that Ms Scanlan had sent some documents to third parties and said she was legally obliged to do so and to inform affected parties.
Ms Scanlan argued that the Data Protection Commissioner should first determine issues concerning data protection law and that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the proceedings. The judge rejected both requests. She said the Commissioner could not grant the type of injunctions sought, and noted that the Court of Appeal had already rejected an application to join the Commissioner to the case. Other reliefs in Ms Scanlan’s motion were either moot, dependent on the refused requests, or declined, including a proposed reference to the European Court of Human Rights. The court said it would hear the parties on consequential orders, including costs.
In a separate application, the plaintiffs sought to strike out parts of Ms Scanlan’s revised pleadings. The judge ordered specified portions of the defence removed, while allowing other paragraphs and passages to remain. In the counterclaim, paragraph 1, seeking damages under section 7 of the Data Protection Acts for an alleged failure to provide access-request data in time, was allowed to stand, as were paragraphs 16 and 17 seeking interest and other relief. The remaining counterclaim paragraphs were ordered struck out.
The judgment did not decide the underlying injunction claim or the surviving counterclaim. The judge said the amended pleadings should now allow the case to proceed, but noted that significant interlocutory matters remained before trial. She reserved consequential orders, including costs, for a further hearing.