Author: Matt McConville

GDPR Team

Ian Kyle

Director

Matt McConville

Senior Associate

Lee Wall

Associate

Damien Gill

Senior Associate

Joseph Waters

Solicitor

Company discloses contractor’s daily rate to work colleagues

Irvings Law have successfully represented a client in a data breach compensation claim against Publicis Sapient; the client wishes to remain anonymous for the purposes of this case report and as such will be referred to as ‘AG’.

Discovery

AG was working as a contractor for Publicis Sapient when they sent out a report to AG’s work colleagues. The said report contained personal and sensitive information relating to AG, namely the daily rate he was being paid under his contracting agreement.

Once AG’s work colleagues realised this information was in the report, they began discussing this amongst themselves and made AG feel extremely distressed and uncomfortable.  Due to the uncomfortable working environment, AG was allowed to work from home for the rest of the day.

When AG initially tried to discuss the data breach with Publicis Sapient, they did not address the data breach and merely mentioned that they did not feel AG’s daily rate and performance levels aligned. AG’s subsequently raised several concerns with Publicis Sapient in regards to this and their response to the said breach.

Following this, AG’s contact was terminated with one week of notice paid. Due to the concerns AG raised, Publicis Sapient then contacted AG and offered an additional extra week of pay as compensation for the data breach. AG declined but discovered that Publicis Sapient then paid AG the additional week’s pay anyway. AG still did not consider Publicis Sapient’s response to the data breach to be satisfactory nor had Publicis Sapient taken into account the psychological effects the data breach had and as such sought expert legal advice.

Representation

AG found our firm by contacting Yvonne Dobson, a member of our specialised team, who agreed that Publicis Sapient had unlawfully infringed the AG’s personal data. Yvonne did not hesitate to offer ‘no win, no fee’ terms to AG and was subsequently instructed.

Yvonne then presented a Letter of Claim on behalf of AG to Publicis Sapient. The Letter of Claim alleged that Publicis Sapient had breached/invaded AG’s privacy, 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 AG.

Resolution

In their Letter of Response, Publicis Sapient accepted the causes of action AG alleged in his Letter of Claim but disputed the value of the claim stating they had already compensated AG sufficiently by paying the additional week’s pay. Despite Publicis Sapient’s comments, they made AG a low offer of settlement.

Yvonne provided advice to AG in regards to the estimated value of the Claim and advised AG to reject Publicis Sapient’s offer. AG followed Yvonne’s advice and put forward a counter-offer of £3,750.00 (plus legal costs) which was then accepted by Publicis Sapient.

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