Suing social media – the Facebook Ireland cases
Two recent Northern Irish cases have provided useful guidance on the ability to claim compensation from social media companies following the publication of content by other users. The two cases, J20 v Facebook Ireland Limited and CG v Facebook Ireland Limited and McCloskey, concerned Facebook's liability to pay damages to individuals who claimed that unlawful content was being published about them. In J20 (a High Court decision), the claimant (a man in his 50s with alleged Loyalist links) alleged that the posts complained of amounted to harassment and misuse of private information. Meanwhile, in CG (decided by the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal), the relevant causes of action on appeal were misuse of private information and breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 in respect of postings published in the context of CG's history as a convicted sex offender. Both judgments contain interesting discussions of whether the information published gave rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy for the claimants
8 Feb 2017 ... The two cases, J20 v Facebook Ireland Limited and CG v Facebook Ireland Limited and McCloskey, concerned Facebook's liability to pay ...