In a decision dated February 18, 2010, the Labour Court of Berlin was called to judge on the dismissal of a compliance officer on the grounds of alleged breaches of German data protection rules (Labour Court Berlin, Az. 38 Ca 12879/09).
In this case, a compliance officer with no legal background ordered several measures to monitor other employees of the company. This included inter alia unlawful data merging and reconciliation activities with respect to personal data, which were said to infringe Sec. 32 of the German Federal Data Protection Act. The court stated that combating corruption and other economic crimes might, in certain cases, justify such data processing measures, and it was not proven by the employer that in the underlying case the employee who ought to be dismissed did know that the actions were unlawful. In particular, due to the fact that the compliance officer himself was not particularly legally trained and other employees with legal know-how did not object the employee screening, the court found that the employer failed to give sufficient evidence that the employee must have known that the screening actions were illegal. Therefore, there was no reason for an extraordinary termination or an ordinary dismissal.
