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22 July 2020
Issue: 7896 / Categories: Features , Privacy , Human rights
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The Right to Erasure: an (edited?) history

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The evolution of the right to erasure & how it is now being used in practice, by Alex Keenlyside & Hannah Crowther
  • 2014: the CJEU establishes a ‘right to be forgotten’.
  • 2018: the GDPR introduces a ‘right to erasure’.

It’s been over six years since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) first established a ‘right to be forgotten’ in 2014, in the fight by Mr Costeja to have links to news articles about his bankruptcy de-listed from Google Search results (Google Spain SL and another company v Agencia Espanola de proteccion de Datos (AEPD) and another, [2014] All ER (D) 124 (May)). Then, in 2018, the GDPR introduced the far more expansive (if rather less poetic) ‘right to erasure’, exercisable against any controller. In this article, we consider the evolution of the right in the UK, and how it is now being used in practice.

In Costeja, the CJEU decided that news articles and other content, even if lawfully published online,

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Slater Heelis—Charlotte Beck

Slater Heelis—Charlotte Beck

Partner and Manchester office lead appointed head of family

Civil Justice Council—Nigel Teasdale

Civil Justice Council—Nigel Teasdale

DWF insurance services director appointed to Civil Justice Council

R3—Jodie Wildridge

R3—Jodie Wildridge

Kings Chambers barrister appointed chair of R3 Yorkshire

NEWS
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NLJ this week: Renters’ Rights revolution begins—brace for tribunal chaos

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

NLJ this week: Civil procedure gets a spring overhaul
Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
NLJ this week: Why GP complaints are going nowhere
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
NLJ this week: Prenups meet a jurisdictional brick wall
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
NLJ this week: Has Rylands v Fletcher come back from the dead?
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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