OLG Frankfurt am Main - 6 U 127/24
| OLG Frankfurt am Main - 6 U 127/24 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court: | OLG Frankfurt (Germany) |
| Jurisdiction: | Germany |
| Relevant Law: | Article 18 GDPR |
| Decided: | 31.10.2024 |
| Published: | 12.11.2024 |
| Parties: | |
| National Case Number/Name: | 6 U 127/24 |
| European Case Law Identifier: | ECLI:DE:OLGHE:2024:1031.6U127.24.0A |
| Appeal from: | LG Wiesbaden (Germany) 2 O 35/24 |
| Appeal to: | Unknown |
| Original Language(s): | German |
| Original Source: | beck (in German) |
| Initial Contributor: | tjk |
The court ruled that a credit rating agency lawfully ceased to provide a data subject's credit score to its partners after the data subject challenged the credit scorings legality.
English Summary
Facts
The controller is a credit rating agency. Its contractual partners provide it with information relevant to the database from their business relationships with their customers. The controller stores this information as entries in its database in order to be able to provide its contractual partners with information.
The data subject had previously initiated court procedures against the controller about the legality of the so-called score value, which the controller determines on the basis of the data available to it and which is intended to assess the creditworthiness of the person concerned.
With regard to this procedure, the controller imposed a so-called score block until its conclusion, with the consequence that no more credit score values are transmitted in the event of a corresponding query by the controller's contractual partners. This can lead to difficulties for the data subject, e.g. for entering into new contracts.
The data subject challenged the block imposed by the controller on the data subject of the database for the provision of information on contractual partners with the application to lift the so-called "score block" and to refrain from a future block until the decision in the main action. The Court of first instance dismissed the application for a preliminary injunction.
The data subject's appealed this, seeking the court, to order the controller to immediately to lift the block imposed on the applicant of the database for the provision of information on contractual partners, the so-called "score block".
Holding
The court stated, the data subject is only entitled to the rights of data subjects under Chapter III of the GDPR. The court found, that the data subject seeks the (re)commencement of the processing of personal data by the controller in the form of scoring and the transmission of the scoring value to third parties which is not listed in Chapter III. Thus, the court found, that the GDPR did not provide a legal basis for it's claim.
The court also found, that there was no (quasi)contractual basis, as there is no contractual relationship between the controller and the data subject.
The court found, that no violation of the data subject's general right of personality occurred. The court held, that the controller lawfully restricted the data processing according to Article 18 GDPR after the data subject objected to the processing.
Furthermore, the court held, the controller in refraining from expressing an opinion about the data subject did not distort or falsify the representation of the data subject. Specifically the court also denied, that the notifications of the controller to third parties that a score value is not communicated impaired the rights of the data subject. The court held that this notification does not allow for any conclusions to be drawn about the creditworthiness of the data subject.
In any way, the court held, that the decision of the controller to no longer provide information on the score values is based on an objective reason as according to Article 18 GDPR the controller is required to only store the data in question, when the data subject's consent to the processing of certain data has not been declared.
The court held, that if the data subject wishes for the controller to resume the provision of its credit score, it must declare a clear, comprehensive and legally effective waiver of claims for damages based on previous processing practice.
The court also held, that a monopolistic position of the controller did not matter for the case at hand.
Comment
Unfortunately the beck-Verlag is the only source for this decision and it's only available behind a paywall
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English Machine Translation of the Decision
The decision below is a machine translation of the German original. Please refer to the German original for more details.
