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The
law student has claimed 500 euros ($531) in damages each for the
more than 25,000 signatories to his lawsuit - the latest in a
series of European challenges to U.S. technology firms and their
handling of personal data.
At issue is whether the claims can be combined into one in
Austrian courts. An appellate court has let Schrems file a
personal claim but not allowed a class action to form, his
Europe-vs-Facebook group said.
"It would not make a lot of sense for the court or the parties
before it to file these claims as thousands of individual
lawsuits, which we can still do if a 'class action' is not
allowed," Schrems said in a statement.
"We therefore think that the 'class action' is not only legal
but also the only reasonable way to deal with thousands of
identical privacy violations by Facebook."
Facebook, whose international headquarters are in Ireland, has
denied any wrongdoing and sought to block a class action suit.
Ireland's High Court last month ordered an investigation into
Facebook's transfer of European Union users' data to the United
States to make sure personal privacy was properly protected from
U.S. government surveillance.
The court told the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to launch
a probe following a landmark ruling by the European Court of
Justice last month which struck down the Safe Harbour agreement
that had allowed the free transfer of data between the European
Union and the United States.
(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Mark Potter)
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