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What remedies are available to tenant A for the landlord B's breach of contract in not providing a copy of their privacy notice, nor making it available on their website, as the contract required, when the tenancy ended 20 months ago? Note that B likely still holds A’s personal data making them remain a data controller with respect to A. Would a county court order specific performance of the obligation by B in this case, or award A pecuniary damages as compensation for the late performance? When are courts empowered and not empowered to compel specific (non-monetary) performance?

Along the same lines, in the case of tenant C and sub-landlord D, who did not provide a copy of their head lease agreement, likewise required by their sublease agreement, what remedies does C have against D, either during or after the termination of the tenancy?

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  • Did A ever request a copy of the privacy notice? Did A suffer any loss due to the failure of B to provide a privacy notice? (Note that there may be specific laws requiring documents to be provided, in which case there might be a criminal offence committed, although if a website is broken and nobody notices or brings it to B's attention, a criminal conviction is unlikely. I can't tell if you're interested in possible criminal violations.)
    – Stuart F
    Jan 16 at 15:00
  • More just interested in the continuing liability to specific performance although I wouldn’t be surprised as well if there are specific monetary penalties statutorily set out for not providing a privacy notice in the data protection act apart from the master of the contractually specified obligation to provide it Which is what I suppose I’m mainly asking about. Jan 16 at 15:19
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    To make sure I am clear, some administrative thing didn't happen over a year and a half ago, you haven't asked or reminded the other party to give them an opportunity to remedy the situation, no harm occurred to you, it is now completely irrelevant to your current circumstances, yet you are now trying to leverage this seemingly minor omission into cash? Jan 16 at 18:46
  • @MichaelHall please don’t me unfounded and incorrect assumptions that are incidentally entirely irrelevant to the legal substance of the question. Thank you Jan 16 at 20:51
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    I have no objection to you asking, but it would seem to me that once the timeline of the contract has expired that any privacy terms would be null and void, and therefore any obligation to provide them would be moot and optional on the part of the landlord. Unless some breach of privacy was alleged and evidence in the form of the policy was needed to deal with the matter at hand. To be blunt, the question came across as artfully worded money grubbing. So what is your objection to me seeking to clarify what you are trying to accomplish via comments and questions? Jan 16 at 21:19

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What damage did they suffer as a result of the breach?

When either aggrieved party makes a claim, they will need to clearly state the monetary damages they seek and on what basis they suffered that loss. It is difficult to see a clear basis for how loss might have occurred.

Courts do not hear moot cases

In both these cases, it appears that the contracts have come to their natural end. It is quite normal that in many contracts, not all terms will have been strictly complied with. Most of these breaches are immaterial, and for contracts that are no longer ongoing, a court would likely dismiss the case as being moot.

GDPR rights are independent of the contract

The obligation to provide a privacy policy for landlord B is both a (moot) contractual duty and an ongoing statutory duty. There are many questions on this site dealing with GDPR non compliance - you should find your answer in one of those.

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  • But what if in the second case C seeks the head lease as a form of discovery to use the head lease to gain advantage in parallel litigation? In this case it is far from moot. Jan 17 at 10:43

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