Key Facts
- •Joseph Pacini and Carsten Geyer, former senior executives of XIO Group, sued Dow Jones & Company Incorporated (publisher of the Wall Street Journal) for data protection violations.
- •The suit concerned two articles published in 2017 and 2018 alleging fraud and lack of transparency in XIO's funding.
- •Dow Jones applied to strike out the claim, arguing it was a disguised, statute-barred defamation claim.
- •The Claimants argued the articles contained inaccurate personal data, causing reputational harm and impacting their ability to secure investments.
- •The articles were viewed relatively few times in the UK in 2022 and 2023, but significantly more in previous years.
- •The Claimants did not bring a defamation claim after the publication of the articles, and the court noted their lack of sufficient explanation for this delay.
Legal Principles
The court may strike out a statement of case if it is an abuse of the court's process.
CPR 3.4(2)(b)
A claimant may choose which cause of action to pursue, even if other causes of action are available.
Joyce v Sengupta [1993] 1 WLR 337
A claim may be struck out if it is a statute-barred claim disguised as another claim to avoid established defences (Jameel abuse).
Jameel v Dow Jones & Company Inc [2005] QB 946
The court will consider the claimant's objective in determining whether a claim is an abuse of process.
NT1 v Google [2019] QB 344
Damages for reputational harm may be recoverable in data protection claims, but the law is uncertain and in flux.
Various cases, including Richard v BBC [2019] Ch 169, ZXC v Bloomberg LP [2019] EWHC 970 (QB), Sicri v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2021] 4 WLR 9, Aven v Orbis [2020] EWHC 1812 (QB)
In assessing Jameel abuse, the court considers the value of the claim and the likely cost of achieving it, but this is not a mechanical assessment.
Alsaifi v Trinity Mirror [2019] EMLR 1
Outcomes
Dow Jones' application to strike out the claim was dismissed.
The court found the claim arguable and not plainly improper, noting the Claimants' stated objective to correct inaccurate personal data causing them business difficulties since late 2021. The court held that it could not ignore the Claimants' evidence of their purpose in bringing the proceedings, even considering the lack of a sufficient explanation for their delay in pursuing a defamation claim.
The court ordered a trial of preliminary issues regarding the meaning of the personal data, whether the meaning was defamatory, and whether the data constituted 'criminal offence data'.
These issues would clarify the ambit of the dispute and are considered essential to proceed.