Locus standi and some issues of violation of personal data in privacy lawsuits

Abstract

Press correction, and press-related personality rights lawsuits occupy a special place in the Hungarian legal system. After the introduction, the study describes the current Hungarian legal environment, followed by the relevant guidelines of the Supreme Court (Kúria, Chamber opinions No. 12, 13., 14., and 15), which still determine the basic issues of these lawsuits. In the third part of the article, it discusses three key issues of judicial practice. All three problems are related to the peculiarity that the role of judicial discretion in these proceedings is much broader compared to other legal proceedings, as the judge not only reconstructs the facts and weighs evidence, but also interprets ordinary texts (texts of newspaper articles) within a legal framework. The first problem area is when the person concerned is not a living individual, but special for some reason: either deceased, or a community, or a legal entity. The second problem area covers questions related to the recognizability of the injured person, while the third topic area discusses some issues of the relationship between the content of the communication and the affected person. The study concludes with a discussion of data protection considerations in lawsuits related to press correction and personality rights.