Morrisons has been granted permission to appeal to the Supreme Court after losing a major legal case involving a data leak.

The fourth-largest supermarket in the UK lost an appeal against a High Court ruling in October 2018 and was found liable for a data breach which affected more than 100,000 of its employees.

However, yesterday the grocer won approval to appeal the case to the UK’s highest court.

JMW Solicitors partner and data privacy law specialist Nick McAleenan said: “While the decision to grant permission for a further appeal is of course disappointing for the claimants, we have every confidence that the right verdict will, once again, be reached – it cannot be right that there should be no legal recourse where employee information is handed in good faith to one of the largest companies in the UK and then leaked on such a large scale.” 

Morrisons has been locked in a legal battle with more than 5,000 former employees for years, in what has been the first data leak class action lawsuit in UK legal history.

The class action stems from an incident where payroll data was leaked by Andrew Skelton, a disgruntled employee who had been disciplined by Morrisons. He was jailed for eight years in 2015.