The tone of much litigation correspondence is often one of outraged offence: your client is the repository of all virtue and the “other side” is guilty of extreme bad faith. This can sometimes be hidden in mild language: the description “unhelpful” often covers a multitude of sins in its passive-aggressive use and can easily be understood to mean that the recipient party is guilty of egregious misconduct.

The case of Lloyd v. Google recently decided by the Supreme Court of the UK was an attempt to establish a claim put at £750 per individual affected. But what caused lawyers and litigation funders to salivate was the fact that many millions of individuals were in fact affected by data breaches.