OLG Bamberg – 10 U 61/25 e

17 February 2026

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The court held that the mere automated creation of a score value does not trigger [[Article 22 GDPR|Article 22 GDPR]] unless it directly leads to a legally or similarly significant decision about the data subject.

== English Summary ==

=== Facts ===
The data subject brought multiple claims against a credit scoring company, arguing that its automated generation of various score values was unlawful under the GDPR. He sought declaratory relief, injunctive relief against exclusively automated scoring, disclosure of non-automated scores, damages, expanded access rights, and restrictions on the factors used in future scoring.

The court of first instance dismissed the claims. The data subject appealed, relying in particular on [[Article 22 GDPR|Article 22 GDPR]] and arguing that negative scores could affect third-party decisions such as the conclusion of a rental agreement.

=== Holding ===
The court announced dismissed the appeal as unfounded.

It agreed with the lower court that [[Article 22 GDPR#1|Article 22(1) GDPR]] was not applicable, because the automated generation of a score value, by itself, does not constitute a decision producing legal or similarly significant effects on the data subject.

The court emphasised that [[Article 22 GDPR|Article 22 GDPR]] requires that the automated processing itself directly determines the outcome for the data subject, without independent decision-making by a third party. Where third parties, such as landlords or banks, merely take a score into account alongside other factors, the necessary causal link is missing. Referring to the CJEU’s judgment in C-634/21 (SCHUFA), the court stressed that Article 22 applies only where the automated result plays a decisive role in the final decision, which must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Because the data subject failed to show that any automated score had directly caused a concrete adverse decision, all related claims, including injunctive relief, damages under [[Article 82 GDPR|Article 82 GDPR]], and expanded access rights, were dismissed.

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== English Machine Translation of the Decision ==
The decision below is a machine translation of the German original. Please refer to the German original for more details.

<pre>
Subject

Interest in declaratory relief, inadmissibility, score value, violation of the right to be heard, legal basis for the claim, risk of recurrence
Ruling

1. The Senate intends to dismiss the plaintiff’s appeal against the judgment of the Würzburg Regional Court of July 16, 2025, Case No. 21 O 999/24, pursuant to Section 522 Paragraph 2 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), because it unanimously holds that the appeal obviously has no prospect of success, the case is not of fundamental importance, neither the development of the law nor the safeguarding of uniform jurisprudence requires a decision by the appellate court, and holding an oral hearing on the appeal is not warranted.

2. The Senate intends to set the value in dispute for the appeal proceedings at up to €8,000.

3. Comments on this matter are due by February 20, 2026.

Reasons

The court of first instance, the Regional Court of Würzburg, dismissed the plaintiff’s action for performance and declaratory relief by final judgment of July 16, 2025, as partially inadmissible and otherwise unfounded.

Reference is made to the factual findings of the final judgment challenged on appeal, pursuant to Section 522 Paragraph 2 Sentence 4 in conjunction with Sentences 2 and 3 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), as well as to the content of the pleadings submitted in the first instance (Section 313 Paragraph 2 Sentence 2, Section 525 ZPO).

The court of first instance, the Regional Court of Würzburg, dismissed the plaintiff’s action for performance and declaratory relief as partially inadmissible and otherwise unfounded.

The court of first instance, the Regional Court of Würzburg, dismissed the plaintiff’s action for performance and declaratory relief as partially inadmissible and otherwise unfounded.
… The court of first instance reasoned that the declaratory judgment action (I.), seeking a declaration that the defendant’s automated data processing for generating various score values was unlawful, was inadmissible because, firstly, it concerned only the clarification of an abstract legal question, for which the plaintiff lacked a legitimate interest in a declaratory judgment (§ 256 para. 1 of the German Code of Civil Procedure), and secondly, it was too vague (§ 253 para. 2 no. 2 of the German Code of Civil Procedure).

The injunction seeking an injunction against the exclusively automated determination of score values (II.) was also unfounded; in particular, such a claim did not arise from Article 22 para. 1 of the GDPR. According to this provision, a data subject only has the right not to be affected by a decision resulting solely from automated data processing if that processing directly produces adverse legal effects. The mere generation of a score value, however, does not affect the plaintiff’s legal sphere. The same applies if the score is disclosed to a third party upon their legitimate request and is subsequently used by them independently in a decision-making process.

The claim for the exclusive disclosure of values that are not based solely on automated data processing (III.) is inadmissible because it is too vague (§ 253 para. 1 of the German Code of Civil Procedure) and, moreover, also unfounded, as Article 22 para. 1 of the GDPR does not provide a legal basis for such a claim.

A claim for appropriate compensation due to a data protection breach (IV.) is unfounded because the defendant has failed to demonstrate a breach of data protection regulations, nor has any comprehensible, causally related material or immaterial damage been presented.

Finally, both the claim for information (V.) and the claim for injunctive relief, aimed at preventing the inclusion of various characteristics and attributes in the future calculation of score values (VI.), were unfounded because the claim for information had already been satisfied out of court, and there was no legal basis for the claim to dictate to the defendant “down to the last detail” how it should structure its business model. Since the main claim was unsuccessful, reimbursement of pre-litigation legal fees was also precluded.

The plaintiff appealed this decision, raising the general objection of a violation of the right to be heard and arguing that similar and identical claims had been successful before other courts of appeal, unlike before the court of first instance (see statement of grounds of appeal dated October 15, 2025).

The defendant requests that the appeal be dismissed and defends the judgment of the court of first instance (see reply to the appeal dated November 13, 2025).

II.

The admissible appeal obviously has no prospect of success.

The court of first instance correctly dismissed the claim; the reasoning of the court of first instance can be fully adopted in light of the grounds of appeal.

The court of first instance correctly dismissed the claim. The Senate would like to add the following, also in light of comparable decisions by other higher regional courts (e.g., Higher Regional Court of Munich, Decision of October 23, 2025 – 19 U 1468/25 –, juris; Higher Regional Court of Hamm, Decision of September 30, 2025 – 17 U 50/25 –, juris; Higher Regional Court of Munich, Order of July 29, 2025 – 18 U 2190/24 e –, juris; Higher Regional Court of Hamm, Order of September 10, 2025 – 28 U 63/25 –, juris; Higher Regional Court of Munich, Order of July 21, 2025 – 14 U 1531/25 e –, juris):

1. A violation of the right to be heard (Article 103 Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law) is demonstrated by the The grounds for appeal are not met. A general statement of the applicable standards does not replace either an individualized presentation of arguments on this matter or a reflection on the challenged decision, including an explanation of which overlooked arguments could at least suggest a different decision. The same applies to the unsubstantiated claim of omitted information.

2. As in the first instance, the plaintiff is also unable to demonstrate the applicability of Article 22(1) GDPR in the second instance. The plaintiff still lacks an individualized and concrete explanation that the mere generation of the baseline or other score value by the defendant could directly and specifically, without the independent intervention of a third party, lead to a decision adversely affecting the plaintiff. This deficiency is also strikingly evident in the plaintiff’s own informal testimony during the oral hearing of June 18, 2023, where the plaintiff was only able to offer a vague suspicion that the intended conclusion of a lease agreement had not occurred (see minutes of the hearing, p. 2).

Even in this context, the plaintiff fails to demonstrate, even in the slightest, that an alleged “poor credit score” could have been at least cumulatively causal with sufficient probability. The defendant bears no secondary burden of proof or even a reversal of the burden of proof in this matter, especially since these are entirely processes, considerations, and decision-making processes of third parties outside its sphere of perception and responsibility.

Even in this context, the plaintiff fails to demonstrate, even remotely, that an alleged “poor credit score” could have been at least cumulatively causal. The case law of the ECJ (ECJ, Judgment of 07.12.2023 – C-634/21 –, para. 73) refers to a decisive dependence of an automatically generated value for the decision of third parties, which precludes a global application of this case law from the outset (see also OLG Hamm, Decision of 10.09.2025 – 28 U 63/25 –, juris, para. 73; OLG Munich, Decision of 03.02.2025 – 24 U 3326/24 e –, juris, para. 31). Even in the case of credit decisions by banks and credit institutions, as was the subject of the ECJ’s ruling (see ECJ, Judgment of 7 December 2023 – C-634/21 –, para. 48), it is necessary to examine each individual case to determine whether the credit score was still considered a decisive factor in the decision (see Judgment of 7 December 2023 – C-634/21 –, para. 50: “<…> in circumstances such as those of the main proceedings <…> plays a decisive role in the granting of credit <…>”). This also seems logical, since numerous other circumstances can be of central importance for the decision to (not) conclude a (residential) lease agreement, particularly in the context of concluding such agreements with private individuals, even down to the simple fact that another prospective tenant offers a higher rent.

[See Judgment of 7 December 2023 – C-634/21 –, para. 50: “<…> plays a decisive role in the granting of credit <…> in circumstances such as those of the main proceedings.”] 3. The grounds of appeal also fail to offer any decisive counterarguments to the lower court’s finding that the other claims were unsuccessful.
… a) Even if Article 22(1) GDPR were to constitute a theoretically suitable legal basis for the claim for performance or injunctive relief regarding the non-purely automated creation of a score value (II.) and the disclosure of a score value not created exclusively by automated data processing (III.) (rightly rejected by the Higher Regional Court of Hamm, Decision of 10 September 2025 – 28 U 63/25 –, juris, para. 73; Higher Regional Court of Munich, Decision of 3 February 2025 – 24 U 3326/24 e –, juris, paras. 24 et seq.), the applications would be unsuccessful because, as already assumed by the court of first instance, they are partly inadmissible and otherwise unfounded due to a lack of presentation of the necessary prerequisites for the claim (cf. Higher Regional Court of Munich, Decision of October 23, 2025 – 19 U 1468/25 –, juris, para. 17 et seq.).

b) The claim for appropriate compensation for an unspecified data protection breach within the meaning of Art. 15 para. 1 GDPR (IV.), which continues to be pursued unchanged, must also remain unsuccessful for these reasons, because, to begin with, there is no demonstrable breach of the GDPR and, in particular, Art. 82 GDPR (cf. Federal Court of Justice, Judgment of November 18, 2024 – VI ZR 10/24 –, para. 21) by the defendant (cf. Higher Regional Court of Munich, Decision of October 23, 2025 – 19 U 1468/25 –, juris, para. 24 et seq.).

c) The right to information, maintained without further examination, also remains unsuccessful, since even the right to information under Article 15(1)(h) GDPR, according to its very wording, does not encompass any disclosure of all processing steps and the algorithms used for them, even in the case of incriminating decision-making within the meaning of Article 22(1) and (4) GDPR (see Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Opinion of 16 March 2023 – C-634/21 –, paragraphs 53 et seq. <paragraph 57>: “In my opinion, these requirements already preclude any obligation to disclose the algorithm, taking into account its complexity.”).

d) In light of the foregoing, the application for an injunction (VI.) must also be dismissed, since without a first, or at least one, infringement of rights, there can be no relevant risk of future, identical, or at least similar infringements of legally protected interests (see Higher Regional Court of Munich, Decision of October 23, 2025 – 19 U 1468/25 –, juris, para. 29 et seq.; Higher Regional Court of Hamm, Decision of September 30, 2025 – 17 U 50/25 –, juris, para. 86 et seq.).

III.

After a thorough review of the facts and the law, and in particular taking into account the appellant’s arguments, the Senate concludes that the initial judgment is not objectionable from the appellant’s perspective and that there is no reason to amend it.

The Senate concludes, after a thorough review of the facts and the law, and in particular considering the appellant’s arguments, that the initial judgment is not objectionable from the appellant’s perspective and that there is no reason to modify it. The Senate finds that the present proceedings do not involve a case of fundamental importance (Section 522, Paragraph 2, Sentence 1, No. 2 of the German Code of Civil Procedure) nor do they necessitate a decision by the appellate court for the development of the law or to ensure uniform jurisprudence (Section 522, Paragraph 2, Sentence 1, No. 3 of the German Code of Civil Procedure). Finally, an oral hearing does not appear warranted due to the lack of any anticipated findings relevant to the decision (Section 522, Paragraph 2, Sentence 1, No. 4 of the German Code of Civil Procedure).

… In determining the value in dispute, the Senate currently considers the following values for the claims to be appropriate, based on the Federal Court of Justice’s (BGH) “Schedule of Values in Dispute” in a different, but not entirely incomparable, GDPR-related matter (see BGH, Decision of December 10, 2024 – VI ZR 7/24 –, para. 13 et seq.): (Declaratory) Claim I: €500; (Performance) Claims II and III: €750 each; (Payment) Claim IV: €5,000; (Information) Claim V: €500; (Injunction) Claim VI: €750.

It is therefore suggested that the appeal be withdrawn – at least for reasons of cost. The reduction of court fees from 4.0 to 2.0 (see KV-GKG No. 1220, 1222 No. 1) is only applicable under certain circumstances.
</pre>

VDAI (Lithuania) – Nr. 3R-219 (2.13-1.E)

CA Paris – 25/04270