Liability of municipal elected officials
Municipal elected officials make decisions that induce financial consequences for the municipality. If the decisions are to the financial disadvantage of the municipality, for example if recourse claims are made against the municipality ( state liability law ) or if, for example, high renovation costs are incurred after a property has been purchased by the municipality, then it must be examined to what extent the municipal elected officials are personally involved in financial liability with their private assets can or must be used.
Community and city council members as well as district council members are voluntary municipal elected officials . You are not bound by orders and instructions. Rather, they are obliged to act freely, which may only be based on the law and the conviction determined by consideration of the public good. You have the same duties of care as full-time public officials. The jurisprudence places high demands on the due diligence of the municipal elected officials. In other words, their decisions have to be carefully prepared and possible consequences weighed up. If there is a lack of specialist or legal knowledge, information, e.g. B. from external experts. Although municipal elected officials are mostly legal and professional laypersons, there is no more lenient standard for them.
If a municipal mandate holder is involved in a resolution that leads to action by the municipality that results in financial loss, recourse must be taken against the municipal mandate holder on the basis of the general economic efficiency requirement (internal liability), provided that he is at fault, i.e. intent or gross Negligence § 276 Abs. 2 BGB , and there are no exculpation reasons ( Art. 34 S. 2 Basic Law).
The municipal mandate holder acts deliberately if he knows the damaging effect of the resolution and wants to bring it about or at least accepts it approvingly. According to the decision of the Federal Court of Justice, gross negligence is present if generally accessible information is not observed or if obvious questions are not asked or obvious considerations have not been made.
See also
- State Liability Law (Germany)
- When are volunteers liable? [1]
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Hanspeter Knirsch: "Liability of communal mandate holders", Haufe Verlag: "Reflexion, basic & concepts", group 4, pp. 209 - 220 (no year) Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 2, 2018 on the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See JZ 17, 1974, p. 521 ff. Web link (PDF file; 1.02 MB)
