About: Smith v Lloyds TSB Bank plc

Smith v Lloyds TSB Bank plc [2005] EWHC 246 was a judicial decision of the English High Court relating to the Data Protection Act 1998. The claimant was seeking data from the bank, and he sought to advance two relatively novel lines of argument. The first was referred to in the case as the "once processed always processed" argument, i.e. that even if the respondent no longer held the data in electronic form, if they once held it in electronic form they are obligated to provide it. The second was that if data was held in a non-electronic form but could readily be turned into electronic form, then it constituted data for the purposes of the act. Both arguments failed.