Annual Report examples of settlement of complaints

Some examples of settlements achieved during the year as follows:

• An agency disclosed to the complainant's father details of the complainant's hire purchase arrangement and the fact that the payments were in arrears. The agency paid $3,000 to the complainant and apologised for the disclosure.
• A $20,000 settlement was made for breaches to rules 1, 2, 4 and 8 of the Health Information Privacy Code. The circumstances leading to these breaches involved a visit by a mental health team to the complainant's property as a result of a telephone call to the team from a neighbour.
• An agency in breach of principle 6 for failing to respond to a man's request for access to complaints made about him was settled by a $9,000 payment to charities nominated by the complainant.
• A telecommunications agency disclosed to a flatmate details of a debt owed by the complainant. This resulted in the flatmates falling out and the dissolution of the flatting arrangement. The agency involved forgave the $1,200 debt as settlement of the complaint of disclosure.

A further example of a settlement:

• The complainants went to a private house where an individual operated a photographic agency. The two women were shown to a changing area to change clothes for the photography session. They became aware that a video recorder was hidden among items on a shelf. As evidence of this surreptitious recording they took a videotape which was lying nearby and handed it to the Police. On that tape were recordings of the two women from a previous session. I considered that the action in secretly videoing the two women getting undressed was in breach of principle 4 of the Privacy Act which deals with the manner of collection of personal information. The photographer agreed to pay the complainants $8,500 but as he could not afford the amount in full, an arrangement was made to make periodic payments which are continuing.

This material was extracted from the Report of the Privacy Commissioner for the year ended 30 June 2000, pages 24 and 30-31.

June 2006
Indexing terms: Settlement - Annual Report - mental health team - telecommunications agency - photographic agency - information privacy principles 4, 6, and 11 - Health Information Privacy Code 1994, rules 1, 2, 4 and 8