The plaintiff, who had received inpatient treatment at the defendant's facility, is seeking damages from the facility and two of its employed physicians. The lawsuit could initially not be served on one of the physicians at the clinic address because the plaintiff's legal representative had provided an incorrect name. Following the correction of the name, service was successful. Despite this, the plaintiff requested information from the clinic regarding the private address of the physician in question. The defendant declined this request.
The District Court dismissed the claim. The Regional Court, however, ordered the defendant to provide the information, reasoning that anonymity is incompatible with the essence of the physician-patient relationship. It granted leave to appeal.
The Sixth Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice, which is responsible, among other things, for matters of personality rights and medical liability, overturned the appellate judgment upon the defendant's appeal, dismissed the claim, and provided the following essential reasons:
While a patient generally has a right to inspect their medical records vis-à-vis the physician and hospital, even outside of litigation, insofar as these records pertain to objective physical findings and reports on treatment measures (medication, surgery, etc.), and the clinic operator is generally obliged to inform the patient of the name of the treating physician, the plaintiff did not require the physician's private address for the civil proceedings, as the statement of claim could be served at the clinic address. Furthermore, the data protection provision of Section 32 (1) sentence 1 of the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) precludes the provision of such information. This regulation permits employers to collect, process, and use data for employment purposes. However, an employer is generally not authorized to forward personal data collected for employment purposes to third parties. Since the data was collected for employment purposes, its transmission to third parties is generally excluded as an unauthorized use, according to the principle of purpose limitation applicable to data protection. Rather, the forwarding of private communication data to third parties requires the consent of the data subject or specific authorization by a legal provision.
Judgment of the Federal Court of Justice of January 20, 2015 – VI ZR 137/14
Lower Courts:
District Court of Weißwasser – Judgment of august 08, 2013 – 6 C 58/13
Regional Court of Görlitz – Judgment of February 14, 2014 – 2 S 174/13
Source: Press Release of the Federal Court of Justice
Goldberg Attorneys 2015
Attorney Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
Specialist Attorney for Information Technology Law
Email: info@goldberg.de
