WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TECHNOLOGY GOES WRONG?
Liability following a technology dispute or mishap is in a state of flux, largely due to evolving and sometimes conflicting approaches by regulators and the courts. Litigation may only take parties so far, and regulators are changing their approaches in light of new technologies and legislation.
Despite this, there are ways to stay ahead of the changes, mitigating both liabilities and costs. In this article we summarise the recent themes and the best ways organisations can adapt to them.
Limits of litigation
A prominent theme arising from technology disputes is that litigation has not yet fully opened up organisations to pay out damages on a mass scale. While the consequences of a data breach, for example, are many, recent senior court judgments show how difficult it is for data subjects to hold organisations to account other than through individual low-value claims.
This is highlighted by the recent Prismall v Deepmind (2023) decision which was brought on behalf of 1.6 million patients whose health data had allegedly been passed to a Google company called Deepmind for the development of an app designed to assist in identifying and treating certain kidney conditions.
It followed the well-known Lloyd v Google (2021) Supreme Court decision which restricted bringing data breach class actions without claimants having to expressly opt-in in two ways. First it required each claimant to show they had the same entitlement to damages, and second, it rejected statutory claims for loss of control of information. To get around this, the claimants in Prismall brought the claim on grounds of misuse of private information, rather than for breach of the data protection legislation (as in Lloyd).
Oct-Dec 2024 issue
Shoosmiths LLP