Jürgen Gräßer

Jürgen Gräßer (born March 23, 1940 ; † September 6, 2010 in Nonnweiler ) was a German racing driver , businessman and building contractor . He became known in a media-effective legal dispute against the city of Saarbrücken about the construction of a supermarket, which was never realized.

Activity in motorsport

Until the 1960s, Gräßer participated in motorsport, he drove touring cars on the Nürburgring , in rallying and in mountain races . At the age of 20, he was employed by the car manufacturer BMW in a managerial position at a branch with 30 employees. At the age of thirty he had already accumulated a considerable fortune by his own admission and lived as the owner of a million dollar villa . He got in the headlines during his subsequent job as a building contractor, which led him into a multi-million dollar legal battle.

The "Causa Gräßer"

The process occupied the Saarland state judiciary as well as the Federal Court of Justice and the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe for a period of 32 years. An appeal was also made to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg , and courts from neighboring federal states were also involved. The "Causa Gräßer" thus achieved national fame as the longest trial in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany's judiciary . The amount in suit was last put at 400 million euros . For lawyers, appraisers and courts, fees and charges in the millions had to be raised by the litigants, namely Gräßer himself, local governments and banks.

prehistory

Jürgen Gräßer as a building contractor planned the construction of a residential and shopping complex in Saarbrücken's residential and commercial area Rastpfuhl , Malstatt district . The concept envisaged 8,000 m² of sales area for a supermarket . The project (by today's standards a mid-range hypermarket) was therefore in the top class. At that time there would have been nothing comparable in Saarbrücken. To this end - in addition to the existing residential development along the nearby Eifelstrasse - further residential buildings with up to 19 storeys with 900 residential units were to be built in the immediate vicinity. Already in the early 1970s, Gräßer had acquired a suitable, eight-hectare area north of the “Im Knappenroth” road for a purchase price of 5.2 million German marks . The property was the former site of the asphalt and tar factory "Ernst Hugo Sarg & Co", founded in 1907 and closed in the early 1960s . Since the building was torn down, the meadow area, heavily contaminated with the remains of the petrochemical plant, lay fallow.

Gräßer had already gained experience in the construction industry. A few years earlier he had successfully completed a similar project in Dudenhofen , Palatinate . The flourishing income from this project and from his active time as a racing driver had made him a wealthy man - even at the young age of mid-thirties. According to his own admission, Gräßer had already received approval from the city of Saarbrücken and a lease agreement with a supermarket chain, as well as a guarantee from the Sparkasse Saarbrücken for the planned construction and development costs.

The development costs were soon to prove to be the crux of the matter; they had originally been estimated by the city at 2.4 million marks, which was still within the planned budget. The executing companies started laying the foundations on Gräßer's order and account and procured material for the building construction. According to Gräßer's account, the city wanted the project at this point, planning and approval had already been decided.

First failure

On August 22, 1974, however, the tide turned. The building committee of the city of Saarbrücken overturned Gräßer's plan and set the development costs at 4.5 million marks. The bank guarantee was not sufficient for this, and the building permit was subsequently refused for this reason. Further negotiations with Gräßer did not take place at all. The municipality argued that the project had to be rejected because the executing businessman Gräßer was never in a position to bear the financial burdens of the major project. The development plan was also changed shortly thereafter. With that, the supermarket project had died, and Gräßer's investments and preliminary work had fizzled out to his detriment.

Gräßer did not want to be satisfied with this result and sued the city in August 1974, for the first time before the Saarbrücken regional court . The subject of the lawsuit was the damage he had suffered from investments that had already been made , as well as the expected profit had his supermarket project been implemented on time and according to plan. The city of Saarbrücken was to blame for the fact that this was not the case and categorically rejected all responsibility and claims for compensation. Gräßer initially put his damage at 9.5 million marks.

In March 1975 the regional court dismissed his action. What the city of Saarbrücken welcomed, Gräßer did not want to accept and went into the revision . In the following years the process dragged its way through all instances of jurisdiction, with the amount of damage increasing and Gräßer's financial strength increasingly dwindling. As early as 1976, the Knappenroth site was put up for auction. Gräßer also lost his property in Dudenhofen, while the legal dispute continued to smolder with an uncertain outcome.

Partial successes

The verdict followed after eleven years of negotiations. In 1986 the Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken, as an appeal instance , gave the businessman Gräßer at least a partial right. The city of Saarbrücken has to compensate him with 5.8 million marks plus interest. That was not even cost-covering for Gräßer's position, and anyway unacceptably high for the city of Saarbrücken. So both parties went back to the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. This referred back to the higher regional court. It was to be examined there why in the defendant decision-making procedure of the building committee in 1974 the initially lower development costs were suddenly increased. The BGH judges followed the plaintiff's lecture and literally assumed “irrelevant considerations” by the city of Saarbrücken, which should have deliberately caused Gräßer's construction project to fail. In the follow-up, the city did not succeed in justifying the increased development costs in due time. For this reason, too, the BGH affirmed Gräßer's fundamental claim for compensation, not only for costs actually incurred, but also for future profits. However, the assessment of the damage left the decision open.

For a further 15 years there was a dispute about the amount of damage, which gradually increased in each new lecture by Gräßer, but without any tangible result. More than 20 years later (1996) an expert report by the auditor Arthur Andersen Gräßers put the total damage at 56 million marks.

The following years were characterized by constant uncertainty on both sides about the entitlement and amount of possible compensation. Since it became clear that a final judgment could turn out also in favor Gräßers and the amount of loss in potentially hundreds of millions already threatening proportions for the municipal budget assumed that urged opposition in the City Council , notably the factions of the CDU and the Greens to a comparison with Larger. However, the top administration saw no need for this and continued to insist on its radical right-wing position.

The legal battle has now lasted 25 years. For the first time in 2000, Gräßer filed a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court . It was not his claim for compensation that was up for negotiation, only the duration of the proceedings. The complaint was accepted as well-founded and was successful. As a result, a complaint was made to the Saarland Higher Regional Court for "excessive length of the proceedings". The incumbent Prime Minister of the Saarland, Peter Müller - himself a professional judge - described the case as a "fat dog", but without taking a clear position for either of the two parties to the dispute. Müller, however, did not fail to mention that the city was probably trying to “litigate Mr. Gräßer”.

The turn

Before the Higher Regional Court, Gräßer has already demanded 158 million marks for legal costs, interest and compensation. In its ruling of November 2001, the court surprisingly set the amount of his claim at zero marks. After careful examination, the judges were not prepared to accept Gräßer's allegations that justice had been sacrificed in favor of an overriding, communal interest in one individual case.

In the final instance, Gräßer appealed against this decision to the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. In April 2003, the BGH finally rejected the merchant's claims before the German courts , with a value in dispute of last 109 million euros, by dismissing the appeal against the judgment of the higher regional court, in the case of lack of fundamental importance. A constitutional complaint sought by Gräßer before the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe also had to fail as unfounded, since no fundamental rights were affected in the civil legal dispute over compensation payments.

At this point in time, the already 66-year-old Gräßer had, by his own admission, spent 21.8 million euros on litigation costs . For a long time no longer from his own resources, years earlier he had assigned his claims to a bank consortium, which continued to pursue his legal position for him. Gräßer had lost all of his fortune, was now in personal bankruptcy , was considered penniless before the law, and had been involved in this legal battle for his entire professional life.

The last judgment of the Higher Regional Court, zero compensation for Gräßer, became final in the absence of further legal remedies . The other side accepted this decision with great satisfaction. Legal department Wohlfahrt commented on them with the words: "For the city of Saarbrücken, it paid off with around 80 million euros that it (...) did not make a hasty admission of guilt". According to Wohlfahrt, the city of Saarbrücken is now claiming reimbursement of costs amounting to 3.5 million euros from Gräßer's insolvency administrator for its expenses in the legal dispute, which does not include non-reimbursable administrative costs and city staff costs. This estimated Wohlfahrt "many times higher".

End stop ECHR

Gräßer had failed with that. His submission to the European Court of Human Rights , which he filed in 2006, seemed promising . The amount of damage was stated there as 400 million euros.

At the same time, Gräßer's lawyers also sued the Karlsruhe Regional Court - this time not against the city, but against the federal state of Saarland, which in its capacity as the bearer of its own jurisdiction was now accused of contributing to the damage. In the first instance, Gräßer was even right there, because the Baden-Württemberg judges could not rule out that such a long trial could cause not inconsiderable damage. Compensation, so yes in form, but uncertain in amount.

The high hopes of the legal representatives for a quick determination of several hundred million euros in compensation were not fulfilled. The proceedings are suspended because the operating banks have currently not been able to bring themselves to the financing of a subsequent performance suit - neither is Gräßer's insolvency administrator or the state of Saarland. The Saarland State Secretary of Justice Wolfgang Schild stated: “The duration of the proceedings is unacceptably long, but it is not unacceptable that he [Gräßer] did not win the trial. We have always represented the legal opinion that if - as has been legally established - no compensation can be claimed, the long duration of the process cannot have caused any major compensation. "

In a last judgment in 2006, however, the ECtHR found that Gräßer's human rights had been violated and that he was therefore entitled to compensation for pain and suffering. The mere fact that his proceedings before German courts had dragged on for more than thirty years prompted the judges to award Gräßer compensation in the amount of 45,000 euros.

“You fight for decades and in the end you get almost nothing,” Gräßer concluded. It is unknown whether the entrepreneur ever successfully pursued this final legal claim in German courts. His life was over just four years later.

Controversial positions

Gräßer's party to the proceedings as plaintiff made the following allegations in the proceedings:

• The supermarket project was deliberately thwarted by the administration of the city of Saarbrücken. At the time of the rejection, an SPD and FDP- led council majority was just gaining strength, which as a representative of the interests of local, medium-sized merchants, wanted to avoid a project of this magnitude in order to spare its clientele lost sales. This approach was also in the interest of the aspiring Oskar Lafontaine , who would have pursued it with the new majority in the council and who finally made it into the office of mayor in 1974, and two years later even to the office of Saarbrücken's mayor .
• The development costs, which were originally set at 2.4 million marks, were "artificially" raised to 4.5 million in order to nullify the project.
• The judiciary in Saarland delayed the procedure “deliberately” in order to strengthen the position of the local administration. In this context, Roland Rixecker is named , from 1983 judge at the Saarbrücken regional court, then scientific advisor at the BGH, 1985 to 1995 State Secretary in the Saarland Ministry of Justice of the SPD-led state government and later president of the higher regional court. According to Gräßer's lawyer Bernhard Sauber, "judicial-political entanglements" should be exploited in Saarland to systematically rub his clients up and force them to give up.

The city of Saarbrücken and Saarland countered this as defendants :

• That Gräßer filed his lawsuit when the majority in the city council was still dominated by the CDU parliamentary group and the mayor Fritz Schuster , who was in office until 1976 . Even before Oskar Lafontaine was elected mayor of Saarbrücken, Gräßer's building project was already considered a failure. Lobbying allegations against political groups and individuals from administration and justice in town and country are therefore unfounded.
• That the development costs of the building project, or the necessary adjustments, were probably not documented by the city before the Higher Regional Court in due time, but were nevertheless always correct in terms of amount. This can be seen from the files.

Circumstances of his death

Gräßer's body was found in the evening, on the day of his death, in a wooded area near his last place of residence near Mariahütte (district of Nonnweiler). Subsequent investigations by the police did not rule out suicide as the cause of death; the businessman probably shot himself with a hunting rifle . A radio station in Saarbrücken reported the presence of a suicide note, but this was neither confirmed by the police, nor was anything ever known about the content.

Literature and Sources

• Matthias Bartsch u. a .: "We want our rights". In: spiegel.de (September 25, 2006), last accessed on October 19, 2015.
• Steffen Fründt: Jürgen Gräßer. Odyssey through the Instances. In: welt.de (December 20, 2006), last accessed on October 19, 2015.
• Tonia Koch : Project Knappenroth. A never-ending justice story. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur , (October 18, 2005), last accessed on October 19, 2015.
• Christian Rath: Justice on the creepy tour. In: taz.de (October 6, 2006), last accessed on October 19, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ANTARES Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH. In: moneyhouse.de , accessed on October 28, 2016.
2. ↑ "Entrepreneur Jürgen Gräßer found dead"; in Die Welt from September 7, 2010, online (last accessed October 19, 2015)
3. ↑ ^{a b} "City welcomes BGH decision on revision in the Gräßer trial"; Announcement from the state capital Saarbrücken on April 29, 2003, online (last accessed on October 19, 2015)
4. ↑ Thomas Weber: “The Mills of Courts”; in: TextilWirtschaft No. 34 of August 24, 2000
5. ↑ "Entrepreneur Jürgen Gräßer is dead" in: Reports from the Saarbrücker Zeitung from September 8, 2010, online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (last accessed on October 19, 2015)  
6. ^ "Police do not rule out suicide - entrepreneur Gräßer found dead"; in: RP-ONLINE from September 7, 2010, online (last accessed October 19, 2015)