{"id":40696,"date":"2021-04-29T11:30:13","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T11:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/billions-in-data-protection-lawsuits-rides-on-googles-last-ditch-uk-supreme-court-defence-for-safari-workaround-sueball\/"},"modified":"2021-04-29T11:30:13","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T11:30:13","slug":"billions-in-data-protection-lawsuits-rides-on-googles-last-ditch-uk-supreme-court-defence-for-safari-workaround-sueball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/billions-in-data-protection-lawsuits-rides-on-googles-last-ditch-uk-supreme-court-defence-for-safari-workaround-sueball\/","title":{"rendered":"Billions in data protection lawsuits rides on Google’s last-ditch UK Supreme Court defence for Safari Workaround sueball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google has urged the UK’s Supreme Court to throw out a \u00a33bn lawsuit brought by an ex-Which director over secretly planted tracking cookies on devices running Safari, on the grounds that local law doesn\u2019t allow for opt-out class action lawsuits.<\/p>\n

The case, being heard over two days this week in the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal in Britain for civil cases<\/a>, has huge implications for legal businesses and investors as well as data protection law. At stake is a previous Court of Appeal ruling, as well as up to \u00a33bn for a venture capital fund backing former Which man Richard Lloyd’s case.<\/p>\n

Lloyd fronts a campaign called Google You Owe Us. He seeks somewhere between \u00a31.5bn and \u00a33bn from Google in damages for breach of statutory duty \u2013 but before that can be argued about, he needs legal permission to serve the case on Google LLC in the US.<\/p>\n

The High Court refused that permission in 2018<\/a>; the Court of Appeal overruled it a year later and said yes<\/a> (with some very pointed observations from a senior judge<\/a> as it did so); and now Google wants a return to the status quo from the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Antony White QC for Google told the court yesterday: \u201cIn our submission it is an important point of reference in this case that under the general law, a claim in tort of breach of statutory duty is not actionable per se; it requires proof of harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

When is a class action not a class \u2013 or an action?<\/span>
\n<\/h3>\n

Class actions, in the US sense, are almost unknown over here because until the Court of Appeal\u2019s 2019 ruling, the UK didn\u2019t have a so-called \u201copt out\u201d class action procedure. In America anyone can start a class action on behalf of however many millions of people they want and it\u2019s up to members of the class to say \u201cnot in my name\u201d if they don\u2019t want to be part of it; in the UK the situation used to be the other way around.<\/p>\n

To start a representative action (the English legal name for a class action) members of the class all need to have exactly the same \u201cinterest\u201d in the case. Here, Google argues that of the potentially millions of Britons affected by its Safari Workaround<\/a>, nobody can tell how many people suffered damage (in the legal sense) by being tracked around the web. Therefore, the adtech monolith says, Lloyd\u2019s case is fundamentally flawed and ought to be kicked out.<\/p>\n