Summary of a court decision. This article summarizes the ruling by the 3rd Appeals Panel of the Court of Justice of Santa Catarina (TJ-SC) on the processing of personal data for real estate prospecting, reported by Consultor Jurídico.

The 3rd Appeals Panel of the Tribunal de Justiça de Santa Catarina (Court of Justice of Santa Catarina) upheld a ruling that deemed the processing of personal data for real estate prospecting unlawful and ordered the information deleted from the company's database. The judgment was unanimous.

The plaintiffs filed a claim for damages combined with an obligation to act after being contacted by a real estate agent affiliated with a brokerage, who said he had obtained their data through the company's system. They claimed they had not authorized the collection, storage, or sharing of their names, address, and telephone number for that purpose. At first instance, the 1st Vara de Balneário Piçarras (1st Court of Balneário Piçarras) recognized the illegality and ordered the information deleted.

When reviewing the appeal, the panel found that the plaintiffs were consumers by legal equivalence because they had been exposed to the commercial practice of making data available to third parties, even though they had not contracted directly with the company. It also applied the strict liability provided for in Article 14 of the Código de Defesa do Consumidor (Consumer Defense Code) and allowed the burden of proof to be shifted. The company was responsible for demonstrating the origin of the data, the legal basis, and the lawfulness of the processing and sharing. According to the judgment, the documents submitted were generic and insufficient, and invoking legitimate interest alone did not establish the necessity and compatibility of using the information with the rights of the data subjects.

In practice, the decision upheld the order to delete the data and recognized that removing the information after the judicial challenge does not eliminate the prior irregularity or prevent a declaration that the conduct was unlawful. The interpretation was applied to the specific case, in which the company failed to prove the lawfulness of the processing and sharing for real estate prospecting.

With information from Consultor Jurídico.

This post was summarized from the original publication using artificial intelligence, with human review.