{"id":217464,"date":"2025-05-01T20:38:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T20:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/court-of-appeal-upholds-damages-against-icbc-for-serious-breach-of-customer-privacy-bc-injury-law\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T20:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T20:38:05","slug":"court-of-appeal-upholds-damages-against-icbc-for-serious-breach-of-customer-privacy-bc-injury-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=217464","title":{"rendered":"Court of Appeal Upholds Damages Against ICBC for \u201cSerious Breach\u201d of Customer Privacy \u2013 BC INJURY LAW"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div property=\"text\">\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Reasons for judgement were published this week by the BC Court of Appeal upholding a damages assessment against ICBC in a privacy breach class action lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>In the case (<i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bccourts.ca\/jdb-txt\/ca\/25\/01\/2025BCCA0131.htm\">Insurance Corporation of British Columbia v. Ari<\/a>)\u00a0<\/i>an ICBC employee\u00a0 \u201c<em>accessed the private information of 78 ICBC policy holders for nefarious purposes. She sold the information of at least 45 policy holders to criminals. Between 2011 and 2012, 13 of these 45 policy holders were targeted in arson and shooting attacks<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Individuals impacted by this serious breach are seeking compensation for their losses.\u00a0 Separate from provable losses the trial court awarded each impacted individual $15,000 in damages for breach of section 1 of BC\u2019s Privacy Act which reads as follows:<\/p>\n<p><em>It is a tort, actionable without proof of damage, for a person, wilfully and without a claim of right, to violate the privacy of another.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>ICBC appealed arguing that absent real harm from the breach only nominal damages could be awarded and $15,000 is not nominal.\u00a0 The Court of Appeal disagreed.\u00a0 The court highlighted this was a serious breach and the Privacy Act does not require proof of damage.\u00a0 Given the intentional and serious breach of privacy the trial judge properly exercised their discretion.\u00a0 In upholding the award the Court provided the following comments:<\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[65]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As noted above, the judge observed that, on ICBC\u2019s proposed approach to assessing damages, proof of significant harm would be required to make an action \u201cfinancially worth pursuing,\u201d and much of the benefit of a class proceeding would also be negated:\u00a0RFJ\u00a0at para.\u00a029. I read these comments as referring to the general purposes of the\u00a0Privacy Act\u00a0as reflected in the guidance of this Court and the Supreme Court of Canada. Limiting recovery to nominal damages in the circumstances of this case would, as I have explained, undermine these purposes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[66]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As is evident from the statement of this Court in\u00a0G.D.\u00a0quoted above, there is support for the view that deterrence is a legitimate purpose for awarding damages under s.\u00a01 of the\u00a0Privacy Act. However, this is not to say damages must be larger than they would otherwise be simply to make such claims financially worthwhile. Damages must still be reasonably responsive to the actual harm done to the privacy interests of the plaintiff. I do not accept, however, that the judge based his assessment of damages, even in part, on the need to ensure such claims were \u201cfinancially worth pursuing\u201d. That was simply his reason for rejecting the general rule proposed by ICBC that only nominal damages should be available in the circumstances of the case.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[67]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The actual basis for the judge\u2019s assessment of damages is clear. His assessment was grounded in the specific circumstances of the case before him. In the concluding paragraphs of his analysis, he explicitly set out the circumstances of the case that, in his view, weighed in favour of the damage award he ultimately made:<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJQuote\"><em>[34]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The breach of privacy in this case was more serious than the one in\u00a0Jones. It was motivated by personal financial gain and resulted in distribution of information to third parties, including criminals. Its impact was not limited to a single individual, and the full extent of the distribution of information and the risks it created at the time will never be known. I find those factors outweigh the mitigating factor that some class members may have been unaware of what occurred.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJQuote\"><em>[35]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the circumstances of this case,\u00a0<u>based on the severity of the breach<\/u>, I find an award of $15,000 per class member falls within the category of a modest or nominal award, and I assess damages in that amount.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJQuote\"><em>[Emphasis added.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[68]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Following the guidance of this Court and the Court in\u00a0Jones, the judge correctly concluded more than nominal damages were available to compensate and vindicate the serious breach of the plaintiff\u2019s privacy rights. The judge relied on two of the factors specifically set out in both\u00a0Jones\u00a0and the Manitoba statute, being the nature and seriousness of the breach and the post-breach conduct of the defendant. Because these factors were based on the conduct of the defendant, and the proven circumstances of the breach itself, they were common to all class members and were accordingly an appropriate basis for the assessment of aggregate damages.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[69]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Damage awards are entitled to significant deference, and the parties do not take issue with the quantum of the aggregate damages awarded. There is therefore no reason to closely engage with the chambers judge\u2019s quantum assessment. I will only say, while $15,000 is likely towards the upper end of the appropriate range for damages in cases of this sort, the seriousness of the breach supports an elevated baseline award. ICBC is vicariously liable for its employee\u2019s wilful and flagrant disregard of the plaintiff\u2019s privacy. This is not a case where the breach resulted from a hack, or an innocent mistake. It is unnecessary to determine here what kinds of aggregate damages might be appropriate under such circumstances.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[70]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The aggregate damages award made by the judge provides compensation for\u00a0<a name=\"_Hlk194678882\"\/>the injury to the class members\u2019 privacy interests and is responsive to the seriousness of the defendant\u2019s misconduct. It provides no compensation for any mental distress, upset, property damage, loss of income, loss of opportunity, or any other kind of consequential harm that may have been suffered by the members of the plaintiff class.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[71]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It remains open, at the individual issues phase of the litigation, for any class member who has suffered consequential pecuniary or non-pecuniary harm beyond the simple fact of the breach to prove that loss and have appropriate compensation assessed. Of course, at that stage, the judge must be careful to ensure there is no double compensation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"SCJNumber\"><em>[72]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The only questions left to be addressed are what kinds of purely consequential harms the class members have suffered, and what damages are required to make them whole.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings above via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons above via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->                <\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Reasons for judgement were published this week by the BC Court of Appeal upholding a damages assessment against ICBC in a privacy breach class action lawsuit. In the case (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia v. Ari)\u00a0an ICBC employee\u00a0 \u201caccessed the private information of 78 ICBC policy holders for nefarious purposes. She sold the information [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[11154,16866,410,13092,20947,43264,9579,12685,13325,37385],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-217464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal","tag-appeal","tag-breach","tag-court","tag-customer","tag-damages","tag-icbc","tag-injury","tag-law","tag-privacy","tag-upholds"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Court of Appeal Upholds Damages Against ICBC for \u201cSerious Breach\u201d of Customer Privacy \u2013 BC INJURY LAW - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=217464\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court of Appeal Upholds Damages Against ICBC for \u201cSerious Breach\u201d of Customer Privacy \u2013 BC INJURY LAW - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0 Reasons for judgement were published this week by the BC Court of Appeal upholding a damages assessment against ICBC in a privacy breach class action lawsuit. 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