Legal settlement and waiving rights.

[Guest]

Could anyone here possibly advise on if out of court settlements can include a waiving of rights outside of the usual no right to further action? A family member has been offered a settlement but it includes no further rights to responses to data protection requests. Their claim hinges on accessing this data which has been resisited. Thank you.

[R0b]

Hello

I would find it difficult for that company (I assume?) to enforce a restriction like that. Nothing in the GDPR suggests that you can waive your GDPR rights and I would think for policy reasons, a court would not look to enforce that provision. Also I am fairly certain the rights the Charter of Fundamental rights has similar provisions under the GDPR e.g. subject access, erasure etc. Another issue is knowing whether they are properly processing your data, giving up the right to request your information would mean you effectively couldn't challenge them nor could you report them to the ICO.

Any provision that says you agree not to make any subject access requests or seek to exercise your rights under the DPA/GDPR is not likely to hold up in court. On the other hand, a restriction on bringing any future data protection claims could be (whether known or not) is likely to be enforceable. Any settlement should be limited to the claim in question and should not prohibit the right to bring other claims unconnected to the present one.

The wording needs to be carefully looked at as the family member might end up in a sticky situation if they want to bring a claim against that company. Resisting disclosure and offering settlement I suspect could be that there might be something they're trying to hide, or it's going to cost them money to comply, or that they just can't compy and don't want to be caught out.