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I filed a small claim against a large gym chain after experiencing physical and verbal assault on their premises.
In summary, during one of my routine visits, I was physically attacked by another gym member merely for walking past her. When I reported the incident, the gym's response via email shocked me—they claimed I violated their policy by encroaching on another member's space and threatened to cancel my membership if such an incident recurred.
In response, I requested the cctv footage as evidence to report the incident to the police, I subsequently got a reply stating to contact their privacy team, I responded stating the GDPR right of access dictate I do not have to request the data from a specific contact and that they can decide to give me the footage or otherwise. Shortly after the email I was permanently banned from the gym in an email notification. This gym happen to be 5 minutes from my address the next closest gym is an hour away, needless to say I was not happy about this.
I made a formal complain to the gym but no action was taken. They also denied evidence of the attack.
After filling my claim they hired a fancy law firm to represent them. In their defence, they deviated from their original reason for banning me which is encroaching on other gym members space after discovering this was not in their own T & Cs, but rather they consider my email threatening for stating “I do not have to request the data from a specific contact and that they can decide to give me the footage or otherwise”
In their interpretation the word “otherwise” is a treat which is against their policy, citing this as the reason for banning me. Failing to mention the attack I suffered at their facility.
We are now at the stage where the court has sent a “Notice of Transfer of Proceeding” Ideally I will like the opportunity to respond to the defence statement with some evidence for the judge to review before hearing.
At this point I need some advice on what to expect and how to adequately prepare and respond to the defence before the hearing date.
In summary, during one of my routine visits, I was physically attacked by another gym member merely for walking past her. When I reported the incident, the gym's response via email shocked me—they claimed I violated their policy by encroaching on another member's space and threatened to cancel my membership if such an incident recurred.
In response, I requested the cctv footage as evidence to report the incident to the police, I subsequently got a reply stating to contact their privacy team, I responded stating the GDPR right of access dictate I do not have to request the data from a specific contact and that they can decide to give me the footage or otherwise. Shortly after the email I was permanently banned from the gym in an email notification. This gym happen to be 5 minutes from my address the next closest gym is an hour away, needless to say I was not happy about this.
I made a formal complain to the gym but no action was taken. They also denied evidence of the attack.
After filling my claim they hired a fancy law firm to represent them. In their defence, they deviated from their original reason for banning me which is encroaching on other gym members space after discovering this was not in their own T & Cs, but rather they consider my email threatening for stating “I do not have to request the data from a specific contact and that they can decide to give me the footage or otherwise”
In their interpretation the word “otherwise” is a treat which is against their policy, citing this as the reason for banning me. Failing to mention the attack I suffered at their facility.
We are now at the stage where the court has sent a “Notice of Transfer of Proceeding” Ideally I will like the opportunity to respond to the defence statement with some evidence for the judge to review before hearing.
At this point I need some advice on what to expect and how to adequately prepare and respond to the defence before the hearing date.
