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Human Rights Review Tribunal serious about privacy damages
By Steven | January 24, 2025
Damages for breaches of the Privacy Act used to be laughable. The very top award was $40,000 to someone whose treatment in an addiction facility was revealed to the media. Not only was it taking an age for the Human Rights Review Tribunal to resolve cases, the awards made it hardly worth the candle.
That changed in 2015 when the HRRT awarded $98,000 for humiliation over some photos of a cake. A credit union found out that Karen Hammond, an employee who had recently resigned, had celebrated her departure by having a few friends over, and one of them kindly brought a cake. The icing on the cake said “Fuck you…” and “cunt”. Hammond posted a photo on her Facebook page (which was not public). The union, Baywide, got wind of this, bullied another employee into accessing the woman’s Facebook page, took a copy, and sent it around employment agencies. Hammond struggled to get employment after that.
The HHRT said the time had come to reassess the levels of damages, and created three bands: up to $10,000 for less serious infringements; up to $50,000 for more serious ones; and more than that for the most serious category.
Cases usually involve someone wrongfully distributing private information (like Hammond). But the HRRT has held that it will also take seriously other rights created by the Privacy Act – rights about collection of information, even if it’s not distributed further.
Last month the HRRT awarded $60,000 to a man whose phone, USB stick and laptop, containing private information, were taken by his employer shortly before he was fired. (The laptop was owned by the company). What made it worse was the way the company lured him out of the office so it could nab his stuff, and how it failed to return his private information despite repeated requests.
This breached the company’s obligations to collect lawfully, fairly, and directly from the source of the information. The company argued that the employee’s behaviour was of concern and said what they found on the laptop justified the concern, but the HHRT said this did not provide any legal excuse for the breaches.
The HHRT has also been working on its backlog, and must now be regarded as a genuine avenue for redress in privacy cases.
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