Collective privacy litigation and the law of torts. A comparative perspective

The present paper is aimed at highlighting the pivotal role of aggregate litigation in the field of fundamental rights. Infringements of data protection rules in the online environment are likely to be harmful to a substantial number of data subjects. Therefore, class actions, where available, and other procedural means of grouping individual claims, are the only credible way to stop illegal behaviour. After having outlined the general framework, comparing the EU and the US legal systems, and having analysed the interactions between data protection and tort law, the Authors focus on an emblematic judicial dispute, whose observations shoes the vitality of collective redress mechanisms.