Morrisons is Allowed to Appeal Data Protection Class Action

The British food store chain VM Morrison Supermarkets PLC (“Morrisons”) has been granted permission by the Supreme Court to appeal the data protection class action brought against it and to challenge the judgment for all its grounds. The case is important as it’s the first to be filed in the UK for a data breach and its outcome may affect the number of class actions for data breaches.

An employee who worked as a senior IT auditor for Morrsisons copied the payroll data of almost 100,000 employees onto a USB stick and published it on a file-sharing website. He then reported the violation anonymously to three newspapers. The employee himself was sentenced to eight years in prison for various crimes.

5,518 employees filed a class action lawsuit against Morrisons for the violation. It claimed both primary and representative liability for the company. The Supreme Court dismissed all primary liability claims under the Data Protection Act (“DPA”), as it concluded that the employee had acted independently of Morrisons in violation of the DPA.

However, the court found that Morrisons is vicariously liable for its employee’s actions, although the DPA does not explicitly foresee vicarious liability. The company appealed the decision.

The Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal and upheld the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Company is vicariously liable for its employee’s data breach, even though it was itself acquitted of any misconduct.

In the future appeal of the Supreme Court, it will have to examine, among other things, whether there is deputy liability under the DPA and whether the Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the employee disclosed the data during his employment was incorrect.