Legal costs (FOI)

Request

A number of complaints / claims have been made by [redacted] against States Departments and States bodies during the past five years. As a taxpayer I wish to know the number of complaints, a brief overview of each complaint, the approximate cost to investigate including any third party costs, and the outcome. This should include the costs of the [redacted] case before the Jersey Employment and Discrimination Tribunal where judgement was given on [redacted].

Response

Information which is the personal data of a third party is absolutely exempt information under Article 25(2) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the FOI Law) if supply of the information would contravene any of the data protection principles as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005. Personal data collected in handling a complaint is collected for the purposes of the administration of justice and to supply the information in response to a Freedom of Information request would breach the Second data protection principle:

“Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.”

In addition we consider supply of third party personal data in this particular case would contravene the First principle, that personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and the Sixth principle, that personal data shall be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

The Courts and Tribunals, to ensure the openness and transparency of the administration of justice, do publish all their judgments on the Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB) website at www.jerseylaw.je. Where judgments have not been anonymised, a search on that site will enable anyone to find all judgments relating to a particular person: this allows the number of judgments and an overview of each case to be discovered in addition to the outcome.

The FOI Law provides a right of access to information held in our records. We do not hold the particular costs information requested. The Judicial Greffe Annual Report published on www.gov.je provides figures for the number of cases heard in all Courts and Tribunals as well as financial information on the costs of running the Court Service.

Article applied

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

Laws referenced

The Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011: https://www.jerseylaw.je/laws/revised/Pages/16.330.aspx

The Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005:

https://www.jerseylaw.je/laws/revised/Pages/15.240.aspx