Apr 1, 2020
Morrisons wins appeal over data breach
Wm Morrison has won a Supreme Court appeal over liability for a data breach affecting roughly 100,000 staff, in a ruling that limits how much companies can be held responsible for criminal acts committed by their staff or independent contractors. Morrisons appealed to the UK's highest court after an earlier court decision that it was legally responsible for the data leak. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court backed Morrison and held that the rogue employee was not conducting work business when he committed the illegal data breach and so the company could not be held liable for his actions. In the Morrisons case, the court examined whether the supermarket could be held responsible for a data breach caused by the actions of former employee Andrew Skelton, who was jailed for eight years, after leaking staff bank account details on to the web. Matthew Gill, a lawyer at London law firm Wiggin said the "Decision today should be welcomed by employers with a sigh of relief. If the court's decision had gone the other way, Morrisons would have been liable to 100,000 of its employees for a breach of their data."
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