The Adentan Circuit Court in Accra has mandated that Bolt Holdings Ou, the data processor for the ride-hailing platform Bolt, pays GHS 1.9 million to Justice Noah Adade, a lecturer and CEO of a software solutions firm.
This came about after the court determined that the company had neglected responsibility to notice the lecturer's identity being used by another driver.
Background
In August 2022, Mr. Adade used his phone to order a Bolt transportation on its App, and to his surprise, the details of the booked driver was in fact his, including his photo.
When the ride arrived, the driver was none other than Peter Walker, one of his own employees. Mr. Walker admitted he had successfully registered himself as a driver on the Bolt App by taking the identity of the lecturer.
The lecturer then brought the case before the court, requesting ruling against the company for failure to detect the fraud of using his identity by a different customer.
The court presided over by Her Honor Sedinam Awo Kwadam determined that Bolt had violated its duty of care to the data of the subject (Mr. Adade) by failing to carry out the liveliness identity verification check mandated by Ghana's data protection Act.
According to the court, this also amounted to a violation of Section 20 of the Data Protection Act, which prohibits data processors from processing personal data without prior consent unless doing so is required to fulfill the terms of a contract in which the data subject is a party.
According to the court, Mr. Adade experienced trauma and emotional suffering as a result of seeing himself as a Bolt driver. It was mentioned that this also amounted to harm to his reputation, requiring him to invest money in pursuing legal action.
The court however, dismissed arguments from Bolt claiming to be diligent and cautious.
