Federal Court Muddies The Waters On Privacy Damages

In a problematic judgement, the Federal Court of Canada has awarded damages against a bank for the wrongful disclosure by one of its employees of account information in response to a subpoena.

This is only the second case in which the Court has awarded damages for non-compliance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA); and like the first damage award under the statute, the amount awarded was minimal. The case is also perplexing, because it seems to contradict the reasoning in an earlier decision by the same court, which established that to be eligible for an award of damages, the alleged injury must result directly from a breach of the Act.