Matthias Prince

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Matthias Prinz (* 1956 in Berlin ) is a German lawyer who works in the areas of press and media law , reputation protection, protection of privacy , entertainment and sports law .

Life

Matthias Prinz, son of former chief editor of the Bild newspaper and later the board of Axel Springer Verlag, Günter Prinz , studied at the University of Hamburg Law . After taking his first state examination in law there in 1980 , he initially worked at the Institute for International Private and Procedural Law at the University of Hamburg as assistant to Professor Hein Kötz . Research area was u. a. the economic analysis of law . After his assistantship, Prinz went to the USA and studied at Harvard Law School. There he obtained the academic degree Master of Laws (LL.M.) in 1983 . Since 1997 he has been an honorary professor at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the Free University of Berlin .

Matthias Prinz is married to Alexandra von Rehlingen and has two sons and two daughters.

Legal activity

In 1984, Prinz was admitted to the bar in New York State . He returned to Hamburg and did his doctorate in 1985 with Hein Kötz, the then director of the Max Planck Institute for international and foreign private and procedural law and later founding president of the Bucerius Law School . After Prinz was subsequently admitted to the bar in Hamburg , he opened a law firm there with Sabine Neidhardt , in which 12 lawyers now work. The focus of the law firm is in the areas of media law, family and inheritance law as well as labor law .

A little later he was back by Julius Hackethal which in Traunstein for euthanasia was indicted. In this procedure, he told the weekly newspaper Freitag in 1999 , he had to “deal with media law issues, with questions of personality rights , and that has resulted in more and more inclination”. As a result, Prinz became one of the most famous media lawyers in Germany, whom Die Welt once called the “avenger of the annoyed”. Prince, who said of himself in an interview that he was “not that arguable”, but was only trying to find “reasonable solutions” for his clients, succeeded in several proceedings up to the Federal Court of Justice , the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice to lead for human rights .

In 1992, Prince represented Princess Caroline of Monaco for the first time against paparazzi who persecuted their young children, and against the media from Europe and their ongoing invasion of privacy and fabricated stories. He initiated a series of legal proceedings against various European media outlets that over the course of 20 years led to precedents in the highest German courts as well as the European Court of Human Rights. These judgments are known as the Caroline judgments .

Prinz also represented German athletes such as Boris Becker and German Bundesliga clubs, their coaches and players, as well as the T-Mobile bicycle team and the German show jumping team. For Oliver Kahn , Prinz sued EA Sports , the maker of the computer soccer game FIFA 2002 , who used the goalkeeper's name and figure without his consent.

In 2003, Prinz took over the representation of the Swedish royal family because of the violation of personal rights and defamatory articles in the German media. Prinz forced 23 German magazines to put counter notices, revocations and apologies on the front page. Damages and main action suits followed, which led to the decision of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court to award Princess Madeleine of Sweden a record pain allowance of 400,000 euros. A complaint by the convicted media company was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice in 2010.

Today, Prinz advises board members and supervisory board chairmen of German companies, in particular Ferdinand Piëch , Klaus Kleinfeld , Ron Sommer and Paul Achleitner . He also advised the Sultan of Brunei on his state visit to the Federal Republic of Germany.

Various media reported in early 2014 about an "ugly dispute in the finest legal circles" in which Matthias Prinz was directly involved. It was about a legal dispute before the Innsbruck Regional Court between his law firm and Michael Neumayer, the son and heir of Peter Alexander . About a year after the death of his former client Peter Alexander, the Prinz law firm sued Neumayer for payment of around 800,000 euros for allegedly outstanding fees and fees. As early as 2009, Alexander complained in a letter to Prinz about his "strange business conduct".

Matthias Prinz has published articles on media law, privacy protection, litigation PR and media strategies. He is co-author of the work Prinz / Peters: Medienrecht . Since 1996, Prinz has been teaching students at the Free University of Berlin on the subject of media law and privacy protection .

Publications

  • Matthias Prinz, Butz Peters: Media Law - The Civil Law Claims ; Beck Verlag, 1999; ISBN 3-406-44853-4

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Prof. Dr. Matthias Prinz LL.M. , on /prinzlaw.com
  2. ↑ Bild am Sonntag of February 9, 2014, p. 20
  3. ↑ Madonna, February 15, 2014, pp. 16-17; Freizeitrevue No. 9 from February 19, 2014, p. 7
  4. ↑ File number of the legal proceedings: 67 cg1 / 12z
  5. ↑ Almost sold out . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 2010, p. 168-171 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Prince, Matthias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German personality and media lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin