The Head of our Data Breach department, Mr Matthew McConville, has successfully represented his client, Mr Mark Winstanley, in a data breach compensation claim against his previous employer, Veolia.
In March or April 2019, Mr Winstanley was subject to disciplinary procedures by Veolia as his then employer. As part of this process, Veolia sent correspondence to house number 76 when Mr Winstanley lives at 79. The occupier of 76 then notified Mr Winstanley of the error. This said correspondence related to Mr Winstanley being suspended pending disciplinary action being taken against him. In particular, the letter contained the allegations that Mr Winstanley had fraudulently claimed for excess hours worked and had misused a company vehicle outside of work hours / outside the ambit of his employment.
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned occupier of 76 has subsequently informed other people in the local community about the incident and more importantly the contents of the said letter. Understandably, this incident has caused a considerable amount of distress to Mr Winstanley and he is concerned that people in his local community now know about these said disciplinary proceedings.
At Mr Winstanley’s disciplinary hearing, he raised this said data breach issue but Veolia were dismissive of the same. Subsequently, Mr Winstanley lodged a formal complaint to Veolia and in response, Veolia confirmed to Mr Winstanley that ‘…this was, as we [Veolia] have found, accidentally sent to the wrong address’. Veolia then offered their ‘sincere apology to the fact that this incident has occurred’ and confirmed that they had also ‘spoken to the individuals involved and reminded them of their data protection responsibilities and will take every effort to ensure that incidents of this nature do not occur in the future’.
Upon receiving this information, Mr Winstanley then contacted Mr McConville for expert advice and to assist him with a compensation claim. Mr McConville offered no win, no fee terms without hesitation and then presented a formal Letter of Claim alleging that Veolia had breached the Data Protection Act 2018/General Data Protection Regulations 2018, breached Article 8 Human Rights Act, breached confidence and also misused private information.
In response to the presented claim, Veolia surprisingly denied liability and refused to offer any compensation to Mr Winstanley. In light of this, Mr McConville issued High Court which were then served upon Veolia.
Upon receipt of the served proceedings, Veolia then changed their stance and wanted to settle Mr Winstanley’s case. Veolia made a global offer of settlement in the sum of £750.00 which means that this included compensation to Mr Winstanley as well as his legal costs. In response to this, Mr McConville advised Mr Winstanley to reject the same and instead make a counter offer on a ‘plus legal costs’ basis. Mr Winstanley followed Mr McConville’s advice and made an offer to Veolia to settle his claim in the sum of £3,000.00 plus costs.
In response to this, Veolia made a counter offer to Mr Winstanley in the sum of £1,500.00 but this time plus his legal costs. In order to settle matters without the want of going to Court, Mr Winstanley then instructed Mr McConville to make a revised ‘meeting in the middle’ offer in the sum of £2,250.00 plus legal costs which was then accepted by Veolia the next day so that they did not have file or serve a formal Defence to Mr Winstanley’s litigated case.
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