Dombrand case

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The Dombrand case is a classic case study in law. It is based on a judgment of the Reichsgericht dated April 26, 1913 (RGZ 82, 206).

facts

The diocese of Fulda wanted to organize a celebration in the cathedral city on June 4, 1905 on the occasion of the 1150th anniversary of the death of St. Boniface and commissioned a fireworker to carry out a fireworks display . During the celebration, due to negligence, the right tower of the cathedral in Fulda ignited and burned down completely. The Prussian state, as the bearer of the church construction load , had the cathedral repaired and now demanded recourse from the fireworks.

Summary of the decision

The Reichsgericht now had to answer the question of what legal basis Prussia's recourse claim against the fireworker could be based on.

A claim could initially arise from management without an order . To do this, the repair of the cathedral should have been someone else's business. While the Reichsgericht answered this question in the affirmative at the time, according to the prevailing opinion today, this can no longer be assumed without further ado, since the plaintiff, as the bearer of the church construction work, was in principle obliged to take care of the repair of the cathedral. In any case, the jurisprudence allows a "also-foreign business", which is neither completely useful to others nor completely self-interested, as a prerequisite for a claim from management without a contract.

Now the question had to be answered whether the management was in the interests of the fireworks. That would only be the case if the repair of the cathedral freed the fireworker from his own obligations. The Reichsgericht also affirmed this in its decision at the time and thus awarded the plaintiff a claim against the defendant from management without commission, so that the court did not have to answer the otherwise difficult legal question from which law a recourse claim could be derived.

In today's case law, however, this question would be answered differently. In principle, an exemption of the fireworker from his liabilities according to § 267 BGB i. V. m. § 362 BGB possible, but in the present case the state of Prussia was already not a third party within the meaning of § 267 BGB, as it acted exclusively to fulfill its own duty as a building contractor. The fireworker's liabilities are therefore not extinguished; instead, according to § 249 Paragraph 2 BGB, which supersedes the general provision of § 275 Paragraph 1 BGB, he now has to pay compensation in cash, so that the management was not in the interests of the fireworks and in the Result of a claim from management without an order.

According to current case law, a claim can therefore only arise from one's own right or from assigned rights. A conceivable claim in one's own right could only arise from two legal bases: from unjust enrichment ( Section 812 (1) BGB) or from Section 426 (1) sentence 1 BGB. The former is ruled out because the fireworker has not "gained" anything through the repair of the cathedral, as he is still not released from his obligations. A claim under Section 426 of the German Civil Code (BGB) is ruled out because the plaintiff and the fireworks do not form a repayment community within the meaning of Section 422 (1) of the German Civil Code (BGB), which means that there is no joint liability, which would be a prerequisite for such a claim.

Ultimately, only one conceivable claim from the assigned right remains, because the church basically has a tortious claim against the fireworker according to § 823 Paragraph 1 BGB. However, this cannot be passed on to the plaintiff without further ado, as there is no direct legal basis for this in German law.

The jurisprudence offers two possible solutions: either through an analogous application of § 255 BGB to cases like this one, or by using the legal instrument of good faith ( § 242 BGB). In both cases this would result in a legal obligation of the church to assign the claim for damages to the plaintiff, who could then assert a claim for damages from the assigned right against the defendant.

In the original case of the Reichsgericht, the church had a deed of assignment vis-à-vis the Prussian state, but the court already considered this to be ineffective because the cathedral chapter lacked the approval decision.

meaning

The case is one of the more difficult cases that are regularly discussed in law school due to the complicated legal relationships between the parties .

literature