Background

Mr Matthew McConville, the Head of our specialised Data Breach Department at Irvings Law has successfully represented a client in a data breach compensation claim against London cosmetic surgery clinic, Centre for Surgery. The identity of the Mr McConville’s client will be named as ‘JL’ for the purposes of this blog.

JL consulted with Centre for Surgery in relation to buccal fat removal surgery and paid thousands of pounds for the same before the said surgery took place. On the day of the surgery, JL signed a consent form stating that she did not want her before and after photographs to be made publicly available. After the surgery, JL thought nothing further of her photographs although she did complain about the standard of the work she had paid for. However, over two years later, JL received a telephone call from her friend from Los Angeles confirming that her said photographs were readily available to the public on Google and upon Centre for Surgery’s website despite JL’s above-mentioned consent prohibiting the same. When JL was made aware of this, she formally lodged her concerns whereby it was acknowledged that Centre for Surgery had published the said imagery without the appropriate consent as a result of human error and had since changed their internal processes to avoid reoccurrence.

Representation

Unhappy with this, JL approached Mr McConville for specialist advice and without hesitation no win, no fee terms were offered. Once instructed, Mr McConville lodged a formal Letter of Claim to Centre for Surgery as clearly, they had published JL’s imagery online for the world to see without any consent whatsoever and they accepted that this happened. Mr McConville alleged that the Centre for Surgery had breached / invaded JL’s privacy under the Human Rights Act, had breached the Data Protection Act 2018/the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as well as confidence following their misuse of private information pertaining to JL.

Resolution

Upon receipt of this, Centre for Surgery instructed Solicitors but thankfully admitted liability and that they wished to engage in settlement discussions. After tough negotiation from Mr McConville on behalf of JL, settlement of over £17,500.00 was reached without Court proceedings needing to be issued or served.