Bid to revive UK privacy damages suit against Google DeepMind fails to show class

Another attempt to get a class-action style privacy damages case to stick against Google has failed in the U.K. after the Court of Appeal refused to overturn an earlier dismissal.

The lawsuit concerned the misuse of health records for some 1.6 million patients whose information was passed to Google’s AI division, DeepMind, back in 2015 when it was developing an app. DeepMind’s data-sharing arrangement with the NHS Trust was subsequently found to have broken U.K. data protection law. But those involved have faced only reputational damages.

In a judgement Wednesday, the Court of Appeal underscored the challenges of privacy class claims, pointing back to another unsuccessful suit (Lloyd v Google) — and stating “the difficulties of bringing a representative action for misuse of private information” have, once again, “not been surmounted.”

The economics of privacy damages litigation only stack up if many individual claims can be bundled together. But the challenge is demonstrating that the same interest applies across the group. And in an age of social media, with people posting all sorts of personal stuff online, this ruling suggests it’s only getting harder.