United Kingdom: UKSC grants leave to appeal in Lloyd v Google LLC

On 11 March 2020, the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) has granted Google leave to appeal the Court of Appeal (CoA) decision (Lloyd v Google LLC [2019] EWCA Civ 1599). Specifically, the CoA had decided that damages under section 13 of the Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998 could be recovered without proving material loss or mental distress, and that a class action lawsuit could be brought against Google as part of which Mr. Lloyd acted as the representative of the users whose data had allegedly been unlawfully processed. The CoA also gave Mr. Lloyd permission to serve proceedings on Google outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales. The DPA 1998 is no longer in force in the UK - its current data protection regime is comprised of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation.